med.  Lib 

OS 


THE  LIBRARY 
OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


A   SKETCH 


EARLY  HISTORY  OF  PRACTICAL  ANATOMY. 

THE  INTRODUCTORY  ADDRESS 

TO   THE 

COURSE  OF  LECTURES  ON  ANATOMY 

AT  THE 

PHILADELPHIA  SCHOOL  OF  ANATOMY. 

TUESDAY,  OCTOBER  6,  1874. 


BY 

WILLIAM   W.   KEEN,   M.D., 

Lecturer  on  Anatomy  and  Operative  Surgery  in  the  Philadelphia  School  of  Anatomy ;  Lecturer  on 
Pathological  Anatomy  in  the  Jefferson  Medical  College  j  Fell6w  of  the  College  of 
•     Physicians  of  Philadelphia ;  Member  of  the  Academy  of  Natural 
Sciences  of  Philadelphia,  etc.  etc. 


PHILADELPHIA: 

J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT   &   CO. 
1874. 


CORRESPONDENCE. 


W.  W.  KEEN,  M.D. 

DEAR  SIR:  The  Class  of  1874-5  In  the  Philadelphia  School  of 
Anatomy  having  heard  with  unfeigned  interest  your  lecture  of  last  even- 
ing on  the  "  Early  History  of  Practical  Anatomy,"  earnestly  solicit  a  copy 
for  publication. 

Very  respectfully, 

Your  obedient  servants, 

W.  W.  VAN  VALZAH, 
R.  H.  MCCARTY,  M.D., 
J.  CRAIG  MILLER, 

Committee. 
PHILADELPHIA,  Oct.  7, 1874. 


Messrs.  W.  W.  VAN  VALZAH,  R.  H.  McCARTY,  M.D.,  and  J.  CRAIG 
MILLER,  Committee. 

GENTLEMEN  :  Your  note,  on  behalf  of  the  Class,  requesting  a  copy 
of  my  Address  for  publication,  is  received,  and  I  accede  to  your  polite  re- 
quest with  pleasure.  My  Address  was  delivered  before  the  Class  of  1870, 
and  published  by  them,  but  the  edition  was  very  soon  exhausted.  Since 
that  time  I  have  made  a  number  of  corrections  and  additions,  especially 
to  the  notes.  Hoping  that  it  may  lead  you  to  more  thorough  studies  in 
the  History  of  Anatomy,  I  remain,  gentlemen, 
Very  respectfully, 

Your  obedient  servant, 

W.  W.  KEEN,  M.D. 
1729  CHESTNUT  STREET, 

Philadelphia,  Oct.  10,  1874. 


THE   EARLY   HISTORY 

OF 

PRACTICAL   ANATOMY. 


IN  welcoming  you  here  this  evening,  gentlemen,  at  the 
beginning  of  the  winter  session, — and  welcome  you  I  do 
with  the  sincerest  pleasure, — it  has  occurred  to  me  that 
in  no  way  could  we  spend  a  pleasanter  hour  than  in  re- 
viewing the  Early  History  of  Practical  Anatomy.  We 
shall  see  in  the  difficulties  that  attended  its  introduction, 
and  the  improvements  that  have  been  gradually  intro- 
duced, how  much  better  off  we  are  than  were  our  prede- 
cessors, and  how  zealously  we  should  avail  ourselves  of 
these  advantages. 

The  life  and  labors  of  Vesalius  have  been  so  often  and 
so  fully  discussed,  that  you  have  readily  at  hand  the  means 
of  acquainting  yourselves  with  them.  I  shall  not,  there- 
fore, enter  into  these  in  detail,  but  only  allude  to  them 
when  necessary.  But  Vesalius,  who  was  born  in  1514, 
although  the  real  father  of  anatomy,  was  by  no  means  the 
first  who  practised  human  dissection.  If  we  wish  to  see 
its  starting-point,  we  must  go  back  to  ancient  times.  We 
must  retrace  our  steps  to  the  third  century  before  Christ, 
and  transfer  ourselves  from  the  amphitheatre  of  Padua  to 
that  of  Alexandria,  to  discover  the  bold  innovators  who 

3 


4  EARL  Y  HISTOR  Y  OF 

first  forced  the  dead  human  body  to  disclose  its  secrets 
for  the  benefit  of  the  living. 

Two  centuries  earlier  still,  Democritus  and  Hippocrates 
had  taken  the  first  tentative  steps,  in  the  examination  of 
the  bodies  of  the  inferior  animals,  butjthey  ventured  no 
further  than  this. 

It  is  in  Alexandria,  three  hundred  years  before  Christ, 
that  we  meet  with  the  first  human  anatomists,  Herophilus 
and  Erasistratus  ;  and  they  are  said  to  have  been  such  zeal- 
ous cultivators  of  the  new  science  that  they  not  only  dis- 
sected the  dead  human  body,  but  even  the  living,  in  order 
to  search  for  the  hidden  springs  of  life  itself.1  It  is  curious 
to  note  how  this  belief  that  anatomists  were  addicted  to 
ante-mortem  dissection  has  not  been  peculiar  to  Egypt, 
but  has  pervaded  all  lands  and  all  times.  Vesalius  was 
shipwrecked  and  died,  when  fleeing  for  his  life  on  a 
similar  charge.2  The  Edinburgh  act  of  1505,  giving  the 
surgeons  the  body  of  one  criminal  annually  "to  make  an 
anatomic  of,"  was  guarded  by  the  proviso,  "after  he  be 
deid,"3  and  even  Staupa,  a  medical  man,  in  his  book  on 
dissection,  published  in  1827,  gravely  advises  the  student 
to  assure  himself  that  the  body  is  "really  dead."4  Even 


1  Biographic  Medicale  par  ordre  chronologique,  par  MM.  Bayle  et 
Thillaye,  Paris,  1855,  tome  i.  p.  40.  This  charge  of  Tertullian  is  reason- 
ably accounted  for  on  the  ground  that  such  rumors  would  naturally  attach 
themselves  to  the  first  dissectors  of  the  human  body.  It  is  stated  that 
Cocchi,  in  his  "  De  Usu  Art.  Anat.,"  Florence,  1736,  has  vindicated  them 
from  the  charge.  Surgeons,  however,  not  infrequently  have  been  allowed 
to  test  operations  on  criminals,  who  were  pardoned  if  they  survived. 
Galen  thus  operated  in  cases  of  nerve-wounds,  and  Pare,  Colot,  and 
numerous  other  surgeons,  in  cases  of  lithotomy. 

a  Bayle  et  Thillaye,  op.  cit.,  tome  i.  p.  231. 

3  Prof.  Struthers's  Hist.  Edin.  Anatom.  School,  Edin.  Med.  Journ.,  Oct. 
1866,  p.  289,  note. 

4  Hyrtl,  Handbuch  der  Zergliederungskunst,  pp.  51-2. 


PRACTICAL   ANATOMY.  5 

poetry  has  lent  its  aid  to  perpetuate  the  legend  of  the 
"Invisible  Girl,"  whose  ghost  was  believed  to  haunt  Sir 
Charles  Bell's  anatomical  rooms,  where  she  had  been  dis- 
sected alive  on  the  night  preceding  that  appointed  for 
her  marriage.1 

But  the  example  of  Alexandria  in  the  cultivation  of 


1  See  Gibson's  Rambles  in  Europe,  pp.  143-4.    The  poem  does  not 
follow  the  legend  as  to  the  dissection's  being  ante-mortem. 

THE   INVISIBLE  GIRL. 
i.  7. 

'Twas  in  the  middle  of  the  night  I  vowed  that  you  should  take  my  hand, 

To  sleep  young  William  tried  ;  But  fate  gave  us  denial  ; 


When  Mary's  ghost  came 
And  stood  at  his  bedside 


ng  in 


You'll  find  it  there  at  Dr.  Bell's, 
In  spirits  and  a  phial. 


Oh,  William,  dear!  Oh,  William, 

My  rest  eternal  ceases ; 
Alas  !  My  everlasting  peace 

Is  broken  into  pieces. 


dear !     As  for  my  feet,  my  little  feet, 
You  used  to  call  so  pretty, 
There's  one,  I  know,  in  Bedford  Re 
The  t'other  's  in  the  city. 


I  thought  the  last  of  all  my  cares 
Would  end  with  my  last  minute, 

But  when  I  went  to  my  last  home, 
I  didn't  long  stay  in  it. 


I  can't  tell  where  my  head  is  gone, 

But  Dr.  Carpue  can  ; 
As  for  my  trunk,  it's  all  packed  up 

To  go  by  Pickford's  van. 


The  body-snatchers,  they  have  come 
And  made  a  snatch  at  me  ; 

It's  very  hard  them  kind  of  men 
Can't  let  a  body  be. 


I  wish  you'd  go  to  Mr.  P. 

And  save  me  such  a  ride ; 
I  don't  half  like  the  outside  place 

They've  took  for  my  inside. 


You  thought  that  I  was  buried  deep, 
Quite  Christian-like  and  chary  ; 

But  from  her  grave  in  Mary-le-bone, 
They've  come  and  boned  your  Mary. 


The  cock,  it  crows,  I  must  be  gone  ; 

My  William,  we  must  part; 
But  I'll  be  your's  in  death,  although 

Sir  Astley  has  my  heart. 


The  arm  that  used  to  take  your  arm 

Is  took  to  Dr.  Vyse  ; 
And  both  my  legs  are  gone  to  walk 

The  hospital  at  Guy's. 


Don't  go  to  weep  upon  my  grav 
And  think  that  there  I  be  ; 

They  haven't  left  an  atom  there 
Of  my  anatomy. 


6  EARL  Y  HISTOR  Y  OF 

anatomy  aroused  no  imitators — no  rivals.  For  several 
centuries  Egypt  was  the  only  medical  centre  of  the  world. 
Anatomists  of  every  country  resorted  thither,  and  in  the 
second  century  after  Christ  we  find  Galen  compelled  to 
go  from  Pergamus  to  Alexandria  in  order  to  see  a  skeleton. 
Even  in  Rome  itself,  and  as  court  physician  at  a  later 
period,  Galen  could  dissect  nothing  but  the  lower  animals. 
The  burning  of  the  dead  by  the  Romans  prohibited  totally 
any  attempt  at  anatomy,  and  instead  of  sending  his  stu- 
dents to  Egypt  to  study  anatomy,  he  sent  them  to  Ger- 
many to  dissect  the  slain  among  the  national  enemies, 
while  he  contented  himself  with  the  ape.1 

This  feeble  light  at  Rome  and  Alexandria,  however, 
was  soon  extinguished,  and  human  dissection  disappeared 
from  history  for  twelve  centuries.  The  twilight  of  the 
well-named  "Dark  Ages"  had  set  in,  and  when,  in  A.D. 
640,  the  vast  treasures  of  the  Alexandrian  library  were 
burned,  night  itself  came  on.  So  long  and  so  deep  has 
that  night  been  in  the  very  natal  city  of  human  anatomy 
that  it  is  but  six  years  since  the  death  of  Clot  Bey,  the 
first  public  lecturer  on  anatomy  in  Alexandria  for  about 
seventeen  hundred  years;  and  so  strong  are  Mussulman 
prejudice  and  hatred,  that,  although  under  the  protection 
of  the  Pasha  Mehemet  Ali,  when  he  first  opened  the 
thorax  of  a  body  a  student  rushed  upon  him  and  stabbed 
him  with  a  poniard.  The  blade  slid  over  the  ribs,  and 
Clot  Bey,  perceiving  that  he  was  not  seriously  hurt,  took 
a  piece  of  plaster  from  his  dressing-case,  and,  applying  it 
to  the  wound,  coolly  observed  to  the  class,  "We  were 
speaking,  gentlemen,  of  the  disposition  of  the  ribs  and 
sternum,  and  I  now  have  the  opportunity  of  showing  how 


1  Hyrtl,  Lehrbuch  der  Anatomic  des  Menschen,  8te  Auflage,  Wien, 
1863,  p.  230.     William  Hunter's  Introductory  Lectures,  p.  24. 


PRACTICAL  ANATOMY.  7 

a  blow  directed  from  above  has  so  little  chance  of  pene- 
trating the  thorax,"  and  went  calmly  on  with  his  lecture.1 

The  Mohammedans,  into  whose  hands  medicine  passed 
at  the  fall  of  Alexandria,  wholly  abandoned  dissection, 
and,  as  we  have  just  seen,  had  even  the  fiercest  prejudice 
against  it,  based  on  its  prohibition  by  the  Koran  and  the 
seven  days'  ceremonial  uncleanness  it  denounced  against 
all  who  even  touched  a  dead  body.  Galen's  anatomy  of 
the  ape  reigned  supreme  till  the  time  of  Vesalius,  in  1543. 
Even  then  this  substitution  of  the  lower  animals  for  man 
was  neither  wholly  nor  easily  overthrown.  In  Paris  we 
find  Sylvius,  the  teacher,  and  afterwards  the  fierce  oppo- 
nent of  Vesalius  as  an  innovator,  lecturing  "from  small 
fragments  of  dogs." 2  The  ape  was  preferred  by  many  on 
account  of  its  outward  resemblance  to  man,  but  swine 
were  the  favorites,3  because,  being  omnivorous  animals, 
they  still  more  closely  resembled  the  human  race,  "es- 
pecially," says  Hyrtl,  with  one  of  his  usual  sly  thrusts, 
"certain  individuals  among  them."  Vesalius  himself  so 
far  yielded  to  the  popular  fancy  that  some  of  his  descrip- 
tions are  drawn  from  this  very  source,  and  the  frontispiece 
of  his  anatomy,  in  the  edition  of  1555,  shows  a  perfect 
menagerie  of  apes,  goats,  and  dogs.  In  1627,  Spigelius 
similarly  honors  the  swine ; 4  and  even  so  lately  as  the 
middle  of  the  last  century,  William  Hunter  tells  us  that 
"the  operations  of  surgery  were  still  explained  to  very 
little  purpose  upon  a  dog."5 

But  with  the  rise  of  the  Italian  universities  came  the 
first  gleams  of  light.  Bologna,  the  oldest  of  them  all,  is 

1  Medical  Times  and  Gaz.,  Sept.  19,  1868. 

2  Morley's  Life  of  Jerome  Cardan,  vol.  ii.  p.  100. 

3  Hyrtl,  Zerglied.,  p.  28.     Text  and  note. 

4  Ibid. 

5  Introductory  Lectures,  p.  88. 


8  EARL  Y  HIS  TOR  Y  OF 

in  many  respects  the  most  famous.  Founded  in  1119  as  a 
school  of  Roman  law,  the  fame  of  her  professors  was  such 
that,  as  early  as  1262,  no  less  than  ten  thousand  students 
were  gathered  there.1  The  faculties  of  medicine  and  of 
arts  were  founded  before  the  fourteenth  century,  and  soon 
added  to  her  fame.  Here,  two  centuries  before  Vesalius 
was  born,  the  first  dissections  of  modern  times  were  made. 
In  1315,  Mondini,  or  Mundinus,  publicly  dissected  two 
female  bodies,2  and  established  what  was  intended  to  be 
an  annual  custom,  but  which,  strange  to  say,  was  soon 
neglected.  Bologna,  the  first  in  the  new  era  of  medicine, 
has  not  since  then  been  behind  her  rivals  in  the  healing 
art.  The  names  of  Carpi,  Vesalius,  Arantius,  Malpighi, 
Valsalva,  Varolius,  and  Galvani,  alone,  are  enough  to  make 
her  famous.  But  she  was  also  the  earliest  exponent  of 
one  of  the  great  questions  of  the  present  day  in  medical 
as  well  as  other  circles.  Her  female  professors  have 
rivalled  their  male  associates  in  distinction.  In  medicine 
she  has  even  had  a  professor  of  anatomy,  Madonna  Man- 
zolina,  and,  in  1865,  I  saw  in  the  museum  preparations 
made  by  her  that  would  do  credit  to  our  own  times.3  In 
1732,  Laura  Bassi  was  made  doctor  of  laws  and  lecturer  on 
philosophy,  and  in  1817,  the  immediate  predecessor  of  that 


1  Encyc.  Britan.,  vol.  xxi.  p.  449.    In  the  fourteenth  century  there  were 
thirteen  thousand.     Paris  had  at  one  time  as  many  as  thirty  thousand. 

2  New  Am.  Cyc.,  first  ed.,  article  "Anatomy,"  i.  519.     Encyc.  Brit., 
eighth  ed.,  article  "Anatomy."     Curiously  enough,  William  Hunter,  in 
his  Introductory  Lectures,  does  not  mention  Mondini,  but  traces  modern 
anatomy  back  only  to  Leonardo,  and  says  he  was  the  first  to  go  even  thus 
far  back. 

3  Notwithstanding  diligent  search  in  every  history  and  encyclopaedia 
here  and  in  New  York,  I  could  find  neither  notice  nor  life  of  this  leader 
among  female  physicians.    Unfortunately,  my  journal  states  only  the  fact 
noted  in  the  text.     I  would  be  glad  to  receive  any  information  on  the 
subject. 


PRACTICAL   ANATOMY.  9 

astonishing  linguist,  Mezzofanti,  in  the  Greek  chair,  was 
Matilda  Tambroni.  In  the  fourteenth  century  we  find 
Novella  d' Andrea,  the  professor  of  canon  law;1  and  such 
was  her  beauty  that  she  had  a  curtain 

"  Drawn  before  her, 
,  Lest  if  her  charms  were  seen,  the  students 

Should  let  their  young  eyes  wander  o'er  her, 
And  quite  forget  their  jurisprudence." 

Yet  notwithstanding  the  fame  given  to  the  Bolognese 
School  and  the  impulse  given  to  anatomy  by  the  teaching 
of  Mondini,  the  science  retrograded,  and  all  the  Italian 
schools  declined.  The  time  of  renovation  had  not  yet 
arrived.  The  school  of  Salernum,  which  had  been  the 
most  famous  for  several  centuries,  mourned  by  Petrarch, 
passed  even  out  of  existence.2  The  dark  ages  were  not 
yet  over.  Boccaccio  laments  that  when  -visiting  the 
library  of  the  celebrated  monastery  of  Monte-Casino, 
near  Naples,  he  found  the  doors  gone,  grass  growing  in 
the  windows,  and  the  precious  books  and  manuscripts  yet 
undestroyed  covered  with  dust  and  mould.3 

From  Mondini  to  Vesalius,  the  best  anatomist  of  his 
age  was  undoubtedly  Leonardo  da  Vinci,  the  great  artist. 
Not  only  did  he  dissect  the  horse  and  other  inferior 
animals,  but  also  the  human  body.  From 'these  dis- 
sections he  made  his  celebrated  Sketch-book  of  drawings 
in  red  chalk,  now  in  the  British  royal  collection  at 

1  Encyc.  Brit.,  vol.  xxi.  p.  451. 

2  Frederick  II.  (Charles  II.?  1285-1309),  of  Naples,  prohibited  sur- 
geons from  practising  unless  they  understood  "  the  anatomy  of  the  human 
body,  without  which  one  cannot  perform  any  operation,  nor  direct  the 
cure  after  having  done  it."    Malgaigne's  edition  of  Fare's  works,  Introd., 
p.  xxx.    Did  they  then  dissect?    I  can  find  no  record  of  it,  yet  this  would 
suggest  it  strongly. 

3  Malgaigne's  Pare,  Introd.,  p.  xlvif. 


10  EARLY  HISTORY  OF 

Windsor,  and  labelled  by  him  with  reversed  letters,  so 
that  they  have  to  be  read  by  a  looking-glass.1 

But  now  came  the  revival  of  learning  early  in  the  six- 
teenth century.  That  wonderful  awakening  of  the  human 
mind  which  was  manifested  in  the  discovery  of  America, 
of  the  passage  to  the  East  Indies,  and  of  the  solar  system, 
and  in  the  invention  of  printing,  of  the  compass,  and  of 
gunpowder,  could  not  but  find  a  new  path  of  progress  in 
medicine  as  well.  Vesalius  took  the  lead  in  1537,  as  a 
teacher  of  genuine  anatomy  in  Padua,  and  in  1543  he 
published  his  splendid  work  which  soon  revolutionized 
the  science.  A  host  of  anatomists  followed  in  his  path. 
Columbus,  Eustachius,  Fallopius,  Fabricius,  Gasser,  In- 
grassius,  Arantius,  Vidius,  Varolius,  and  others,  all  dili- 
gent anatomists  of  the  sixteenth  century,  have  left  their 
mark  in  the  household  names  of  elementary  anatomy.  I 
say  elementary  anatomy  advisedly,  for  the  first  dissections 
were  both  naturally  and  of  necessity  confined  to  the 
grosser,  ocular  parts  of  the  body.  The  bones,  muscles, 
and  viscera  were  almost  the  only  well-dissected  and  well- 
described  parts,  and  if  we  except  Vidius  and  his  perplex- 
ing "Vidian  nerve,"  none  of  the  anatomists  just  men- 
tioned have  their  names  associated  with  any  of  the  finer 
parts.  For  sucH  minuter  investigation,  grosser  anatomy 
had  first  to  clear  a  path.  Bodies  also  were  too  few,  and 
had  to  be  too  hastily  dissected;  and  their  instruments  were 
too  imperfect.  The  dissecting-forceps,  without  which  no 
minuter  dissection  could  be  carried  on,  is  not  certainly 


1  Wm.  Hunter,  Introd.  Lect.,  pp.  37-39,  and  R.  Knox,  M.D.,  "Great 
Artists  and  Great  Anatomists,"  London,  1852,  "  Leonardo."  It  is  un- 
derstood that  these  sketches  will  soon  be  published.  Many  autotype 
reproductions  of  other  sketches  by  Leonardo  have  been  published  by 
Braun,  of  Dornach,  and  they  amply  attest  his  wonderful  knowledge  of 
anatomy. 


PRACTICAL   ANATOMY.  „ 

over  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  old,  and  may  be  far 
less.1  Not  to  speak  of  modern  pictures  representative  of 
practical  anatomy,  Rembrandt's  famous  painting  in  the 
Hague,  about  two  hundred  years  old,  represents  Van 
Tulp  demonstrating  the  muscles  with  our  ordinary  surgical 
dressing-forceps.  This  awkward  substitute,  together  with 
double  hooks  on  a  handle,2  and  the  fingers  were  then  the 
anatomist's  only  resources.  Moreover,  no  good  means 
had  as  yet  been  devised  for  preserving  bodies  for  more 
prolonged  and  delicate  dissections,  nor  for  injecting  the 
vessels,  nor  for  making  permanent  preparations,  whether 
for  reference  or  for  teaching ;  and  models  were  undreamed 
of.  Discouraged  by  many  as  a  useless  innovation  ;  frowned 
upon  by  others  as  repugnant  to  our  better  feelings ;  ob- 
structed by  the  law;  treated  even  as  impious;  fostered 
only  by  the  love  of  knowledge  and  by  its  own  necessity, 
the  science  found  fewcultivators  among  the  bulk  of  the 
profession. 

Among  the  teachers  of  anatomy  it  was  not  infrequent, 
but  beyond  the  lecture-room  no  dissecting-rooms  existed. 
Students  saw  the  demonstration,  and  that  was  all.  None 
of  them  dissected  for  themselves.  Nor  when  we  come  to 
later  times  do  we  find  the  case  rapidly  bettered.  The  first 
Monro  says  that  in  his  student  days,  early  in  the  last  cen- 
tury, his  Scotch  anatomy  was  limited  "to  seeing  the  dis- 
section of  the  human  body  once  in  two  or  three  years."3 
In  William  Hunter's  time,  at  the  end oi  the  same  century, 
practical  anatomy  was  unknown  to  the  mass  of  the  pro- 
fession until  he  established  the  celebrated  Great  Windmill 
Street  School.  In  1866,  we  find  Prof.  Struthers,  of  Aber- 

1  Hyrtl,  Zerglied.,  pp.  19  and  20. 

2  See  them  figured  in  Michael  Lyser's  Culter  Anatomicus,  Amstel., 

1653- 

3  Edin.  Journal,  Oct.  1866.     "  Hist.  Edin.  Anat.  School." 


1 2  EARL  Y  HISTOR  Y  OF 

deen,  saying,  "Less  than  a  generation  ago  it  was  not  an 
uncommon  thing  to  find  medical  practitioners  who  had 
never  dissected."  J  And  even  to-day,  after  considerable 
personal  experience  as  a  teacher  of  anatomy,  I  have  grave 
doubts  whether  the  majority  of  our  students  dissect  the 
human  body  more  than  once. 

But,  in  spite  of  these  obstacles,  anatomy,  both  descrip- 
tive and  practical,  went  on  gaining  favor  with  both  its 
teachers  and  the  profession  at  large. 

Italy,  the  focus  of  the  arts  and  sciences  in  the  revival 
of  Greek  learning,  naturally  took  the  lead.  In  her  cele- 
brated universities  professorships  of  anatomy  were  founded 
early  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  her  schools  were 
crowded  with  hundreds,  and  even  thousands,  of  students 
from  all  parts  of  Europe,  who  returned  to  their  native 
cities,  carrying  with  them  patriotic  desires  for  the  ad- 
vancement of  science  in  their  own  lands.9 

England  was  among  the  first  to  profit  by  the  shining 
example.  Soon  after  the  founding  of  the  College  of  Sur- 
geons in  1540,  through  the  influence  of  Dr.  Caius,  the 
king's  physician,  and  the  founder  of  Caius  College,  Cam- 
bridge, Henry  VIII.  granted  to  the  College  of  Surgeons 
the  privilege  of  dissecting  four  felons  annually,  and  in 
1564  Elizabeth  gave  the  same  privilege  to  the  College  of 
Physicians.3  In  1581  the  latter  college  created  the  lec- 
tureship on  anatomy,  and  in  1583  built  in  Knight  Rider 
Street  the  first  anatomical  theatre.  Here,  in  1615,  Harvey 
was  elected  lecturer,  or,  as  it  was  then  called,  reader,  in 


1  Edin.  Journal,  Oct.  1866.     "  Hist.  Edin.  Anat.  School." 
a  From  1204,  when  the  University  of  Vicenza  (the  first  after  Bologna) 
was  founded,  to  1445,  eighteen  universities  were  founded  in  Italy  alone, 
and  thirteen  more  in  other  parts  of  Europe,  to  which  thirteen  others  were 
added  before  the  year  1500. 

3  "  The  Gold-headed  Cane,"  pp.  91-2. 


PRACTICAL   ANATOMY.  !3 

anatomy,  and  here  he  gave  his  first  public  demonstrations 
of  the  circulation  of  the  blood  about  a  year  later.1 

The  facilities  for  general  medical  dissection,  however, 
were  very  limited,  and,  as  if  to  discourage  it  still  further, 
in  1745  a  fine  of  ^10  was  imposed  on  any  one  dissecting 
outside  of  Barber-Surgeons'  Hall.  But  such  a  state  of 
affairs  could  not  long  exist.  The  profession,  under  the 
lead  of  William  Hunter,  soon  broke  away  from  such 
•  bonds,  and  for  over  half  a  century  almost  every  distin- 
guished anatomist  had  dissecting-rooms  attached  to  his 
private  dwelling,  where  he  and  his  pupils  cultivated  the 
science.  In  1770  William  Hunter  bought  a  lot  in  Great 
Windmill  Street,  London,  opposite  the  Haymarket,  and 
built  on  it  a  dwelling-house,  an  anatomical  theatre,  dis- 
secting-rooms, and  a  museum.  The  lecture-room  was 
lighted  from  above,  and  the  seats  rose  as  in  our  own 
amphitheatres.  Here  he  lectured,  assisted  by  his  brother 
John,  by  Hewson,  and  by  Cruikshank,  till  his  death,  in 
1783.  Here  he  collected  his  splendid  museum,  now  in 
Glasgow,  at  a  cost  of  ^100,000,"  and  his  brother  John 
began  his  own  collection,  which  cost  him  before  its  com- 
pletion ^7o,ooo,3  and  now  forms  the  chief  ornament  of 
the  Museum  of  the  Royal  College  of  Surgeons.  At  Wil- 
liam Hunter's  death  the  anatomical  school  passed  into 
the  hands  of  his  nephew,  Baillie,  and  then  successively  to 
Cruikshank,  Wilson,  Sir  Benjamin  Brodie,  Sir  Charles 
Bell,  and  Shaw,  and  finally  to  Mayo  and  Caesar  Hawkins. 
On  Mayo's  removal,  in  1833,  to  University  College  Hos- 
pital, this  celebrated  school  came  to  an  end.4  But  it  had 

1  "  The  Gold-headed  Cane,"  pp.  95-8.     2  Brodie's  Works,  vol.  i.  p.  448. 

3  Life  of  John  Hunter,  p.  72. 

4  For  these  and  other  interesting  particulars  as  to  this  celebrated  school, 
see  "  Letter  from  Sir  B.  Brodie  to  Dr.  Craigee,"  in  Appendix  to  Thom- 
son's "  Life  of  Cullen ;"  Pichot's  "  Life  and  Labors  of  Sir  C.  Bell ;"  Wm. 

2 


!4  EARLY  HISTORY  OF 

left  its  mark.  Thousands  of  educated  anatomists  had 
gone  forth  from  its  walls  to  practise  all  over  Great  Britain 
and  in  this  country.  It  furnished  William  Hunter's  mu- 
seum to  Glasgow  in  1807,  John  Hunter's  to  the  Royal  Col- 
lege of  Surgeons,  London,  and,  later  still,  those  of  Wilson 
and  Sir  Charles  Bell  went  to  ornament  the  museum  of  the 
College  of  Surgeons  of  Edinburgh,  and  that  of  Mayo  to 
University  College,  London.  From  it  as  a  foster-mother, 
too,  along  with  the  institution  of  new  public  schools 
connected  with  the  hospitals,  many  other  private  schools 
sprang  up,  and  presented  the  finest  opportunities  for  the 
diffusion  of  anatomical  knowledge,  so  that  in  1825-6,  be- 
sides the  hospitals,  there  were  no  less  than  seven  such 
private  schools  of  anatomy  in  London.1 

Next  to  England  in  point  of  time,  Holland  was  the  fore- 
most in  cultivating  anatomy  in  its  modern  revival. 
Ruysch,  Swammerdam,  Albinus,  and  Boerhaave,  in  the 
last  half  of  the  seventeenth  century,  were  not  only  the 
anatomical  lights  of  their  pwn  country,  but  also  of  all 
Europe,  and  especially  of  Germany  through  Haller,  and 
of  Scotland  through  the  Monros. 

I  have  already  quoted  the  Edinburgh  act  of  1505,  which 
allowed  of  the  annual  dissection  of  a  criminal,  and  also 
the  early  experience  of  the  first  Monro,  which  shows  how 
rarely  this  was  made  available.  The  first  Scotch  anatomi- 
cal theatre  was  built,  and  the  first  public  demonstrations 
given,  in  1697.  But  it  was  not  till  1720  that  a  regular 
Professor  was  appointed.  At  that  date  Monro  primus 
was  elected  Professor,  at  the  extraordinary  salary  of  ^£15 
per  annum!  From  this  time  till  1859,  when  Monro 
the  third  died,  the  history  of  Edinburgh  anatomy, 

Hunter's  Introd.  Lects.,  Lect.  2d,  and  fol.  papers;  John  Hunter's  Life, 
and  Life  of  Hewson. 

1  Lancet,  1825,  pp.  26  et  seq.,  gives  a  list  of  them  all. 


PRACTICAL  ANATOMY.  !5 

and  that  of  this  astonishing  family,  are  almost  identical. 
True,  John  Bell  and  Knox,  Charles  Bell,  Barclay,  Innes, 
and  others,  lectured  in  private  schools ;  but  the  Monros 
held  the  sceptre.  All  of  them  lived  to  old  age,  Alexander 
primus  dying  at  seventy,  Alexander  secundus  at  eighty- 
four,  and  Alexander  tertius  at  eighty-six.  All  were  pro- 
fessors early  in  life ;  at  twenty-three,  twenty-one,  and 
twenty-five  respectively.  All  of  them  taught  for  long 
periods:  thirty-eight,  fifty-four,  and  forty-eight  years ;  and 
father,  son,  and  grandson,  they  held  the  anatomical  chair 
in  Edinburgh  from  1720  till  1846,  a  period  of  one  hundred 
and  twenty-six  years  !x 

In  view  of  the  fact  that  this  our  own  city  was  only 
founded  in  1682,  it  shows  unusual  vigor  and  enterprise 
that  in  1751 — less  than  seventy  years  after  it  was  a  wilder- 
ness— Dr.  Cadwalader,  a  pupil  of  Cheselden,  in  London, 
gave  demonstrations  in  anatomy  in  Second  Street  above 
Walnut.  Eleven  years  later,  Dr.  Shippen,  Jr.,  a  pupil  of 
the  Hunters,  became  a  regular  lecturer,  and  the  founder 
of  the  medical  department  of  the  University  of  Pennsyl- 
vania. The  following  is  his  announcement  in  the  Penn- 
sylvania Gazette  of  November  25,  1762:  "Dr.  Shippen's 
anatomical  lectures  will  begin  to-morrow  evening  at  six 
o'clock,  at  his  father's  house,  in  Fourth  Street.  Tickets 
for  the  course  to  be  had  of  the  doctor,  at  five  pistoles  each, 
and  any  gentlemen  who  incline  to  see  the  subject  prepared 
for  the  lectures,  and  learn  the  art  of  dissecting,  injections, 
etc. ,  are  to  pay  five  pistoles  more. "  His  Introductory  was 
delivered  in  the  State  House,  and  his  class  numbered 
twelve.  Three  years  later  his  house  was  mobbed  for  al- 
leged violation  of  the  church  burying-ground,  an  assertion 
which  the  doctor  denied  in  a  public  announcement,  and 

1  Edinb.  Journal,  Oct.  1866.     "  Hist.  Edinb.  Anat.  School." 


!6  EARLY  HISTORY  OF 

at  the  same  time  declared  that  he  had  only  dissected  the 
bodies  of  "suicides,  executed  felons,  and  now  and  then 
one  from  the  Potter's  Field."  ' 

Dr.  Shippen  was  not  alone  in  this  misfortune,  for  Monro 
was  mobbed  in  1725,  Macartney  in  Dublin  many  years 
after,  and  Sir  Astley  Cooper  and  others  have  barely  escaped 
it,  besides  all  the  fights  and  riots  in  which  students  and 
resurrectionists  have  been  involved  ;  and  all  these  troubles 
point  to  a  difficulty  which  from  the  dawn  of  practical 
anatomy  has  always  been  felt.  The  problem  how  to  obtain 
a  sufficient  knowledge  of  anatomy  and  yet  not  to  do  vio- 
lence to  the  feelings  of  the  community,  is  one  difficult  of 
solution.  Had  all  anatomists  been  even  so  gallant  as 
Riolan,  physician  to  Louis  XIII.,  who  dissected  females 
only  on  couches  of  germander,  daphne,  clematis,  and 
thyme,  and  entombed  them  in  their  floral  beds,3  yet  the 
difficulty  would  not  have  been  overcome.  The  problem 
was  only  solved  by  the  anatomy  acts  which  were  passed 
in  England  in  1832, 3  on  the  continent  at  various  periods 
some  years  before,  and  in  this  country  by  Massachusetts 
in  1 83 14  and  New  York  soon  after.  But  these  acts  were 
only  obtained  after  the  community  had  been  driven  to  it, 
not  only  by  the  repeated  outrages  to  the  public  peace  and 
public  feelings,  but  also  by  repeated  crimes. 

When  a  student  with  Sylvius  in  Paris,  Vesalius  had  to 
prowl  around  the  places  of  execution  and  spoil  the  gallows 

1  Carson's  History  Med.  Dept.  Univ.  Penna.,  pp.  39,  40,  80-1,  and  Ap- 
pendix, p.  217.  For  many  other  interesting  facts  in  the  early  history  of 
anatomy  in  this  country,  see  Prof.  A.  B.  Crosby's  address  before  the  New 
Hampshire  Medical  Society  (1870). 

a  Riolan's  "  Enchiridium,"  quoted  by  Hyrtl,  Zerglied.,  p.  31. 

3  For  this  act,  known  as  the  Warburton  Act,  see  the  Lancet,  1831-1832, 
P-  7I3- 

4  For  copy,  see  Am.  Journ.  Med.  Sci.,  vol.  viii.,  1831,  p.  264. 


PRACTICAL  ANATOMY.  I7 

of  its  victims,  and  to  retain  his  booty  was  sometimes 
obliged  to  hide  the  bodies  even  in  his  own  bed.1  The 
more  enlightened,  though  cautious  rulers  and  legislative 
bodies,  soon  provided  a  partial  supply.  The  first  recog- 
nized source,  and  until  the  present  century  the  only  legal 
one,  was  from  executed  criminals — an  illustration  of  which 
maybe  seen  in  Hogarth's  "Reward  of  Cruelty."  But 
Cortesius  tells  us  about  1600,  that  so  jealously  guarded 
was  this  privilege  (in  Messina)  that  in  twenty-four  years 
he  could  but  twice  dissect  a  subject,  and  then  under  great 
difficulties  and  in  great  haste.2  What  a  contrast  to  the 
five  thousand  now  annually  dissected  in  Paris  alone  !3 

In  England  it  was  not  till  the  reign  of  George  II.,  in 
1726,"  that  #// criminals,  instead  of  a  few,  were  given  for 
dissection.  This  act  was  in  force  till  1832,  but  this  source 
of  supply  was  insufficient  even  when  executions  were  more 
frequent  than  now.  In  all  Great  Britain,  from  1805  to 
1820,  there  were  executed  eleven  hundred  and  fifty  crim- 
inals, or  about  seventy-seven  annually ;  and  at  the  same 
time  there  were  over  one  thousand  medical  students  in 
London  and  nearly  as  many  in  Edinburgh.  The  result 
was  a  natural  one.  The  graveyards  were  rifled ;  and,  as 
the  demand  was  a  permanent  one,  there  arose  a  set  of  the 
lowest  possible  villains  who  provided  a  permanent  supply 
— the  resurrectionists — a  race  of  men  now  happily  almost 
extinct. 

At  first  but  few  in  number,  they  soon  rapidly  increased, 
till  in  1828  there  were  in  London  over  one  hundred  reg- 
ular resurrectionists,5  besides  many  occasional  volunteers ; 

1  Morley's  Life  of  Jerome  Cardan,  vol.  ii.  p.  u. 

2  Hunter's  Introd.  Lect.,  pp.  41-2. 

3  Hosp.  and  Surgeons  of  Paris,  by  F.  C.  Stewart,  pp.  144-5. 
*  9  George  II.  cap.  31,  Lancet,  1834-5,  vol.  i.  p.  356. 

s  Lancet,  1828-9,  p.  793. 

2* 


X8  EARLY  HISTORY  OF 

and  their  trade  was  so  extensive,  that  if  the  police  were 
more  than  usually  vigilant  in  Edinburgh  or  Dublin,  they 
would  supply  those  more  distant  schools.  Their  skill  was 
such  that  no-obstacle  was  insuperable.  The  police  watched 
the  grounds — they  were  either  bribed  or  made  drunk; 
relatives  replaced  them — but  a  half-hour's  unwary  slum- 
ber on  the  part  of  the  weary  watcher  was  enough  for  an 
adept ;  high  walls  were  built — they  scaled  them  ;  spring- 
guns  were  set — they  sent  women  as  mourners  to  the  fu- 
nerals, who  discovered  the  position  of  the  pegs ;  a  stone,  an 
old  branch,  a  blade  of  grass  was  made  to  act  as  a  detective 
on  a  newly-made  grave — but  the  practised  eye  of  a  regular 
would  detect  it  in  a  moment,  and  replace  it  after  the  theft. 
Such  adepts  were  they  that  Sir  Astley  Cooper,  in  his  evi- 
dence before  the  Parliamentary  Committee,  declared  that 
no  matter  what  the  social  position  of  any  person  in  Eng- 
land, he  could  obtain  his  body  if  he  desired  it ; x  and  such 
villains  were  they,  that,  for  a  respectable  price,  they  would 
unhesitatingly  make  a  subject  of  him,  their  best  though 
unwilling  patron.  The  laws  against  their  crimes,  and  the 
vigilance  of  the  police,  had  but  one  effect — not  to  stop 
the  trade,  but  only  to  increase  the  cost  of  subjects.3  The 
ordinary  charge  was  from  ^7  to  ^10  apiece,  but  often 
this  was  largely  increased.  In  1826  the  price  was  as  high 
as  ;£i6  to  £22 ;  and  sometimes,  when  the  police  were 
unusually  vigilant,  even  ^30 — $150 — were  paid  for  a  single 
subject ! 3  Their  avarice  was  unbounded.  Stimulated  by 


»  Life  of  Sir  A.  Cooper,  vol.  i.  p.  407. 

?  So  imperfect  was  the  supply,  that  a  serious  proposal  was  made  to  im- 
port the  subjects  from  France  to  Ireland.  Lancet,  1826-7,  p.  80. 

3  Lancet,  1826-7,  vol.  ii.  p.  80;  and  1828-9,  vo1-  i-  PP- 434  and  563; 
1837-8,  vol.  i.  p.  589.  Life  of  Sir  A.  Cooper,  vol.  i.  pp.  361,  396,  397, 
403.  Some  of  the  resurrectionists  died  rich.  See  A.  Cooper's  Life,  vol. 
i.  pp.  416-18. 


PRACTICAL  ANATOMY.  !9 

the  jealousy  and  rivalry  of  the  various  schools,  they 
usually  demanded  a  special  fee  at  the  beginning  and  the 
end  of  every  session  in  order  to  obtain  their  favor ;  and 
so  necessary  were  they,  that  they  were  often  paid  as  high 
as  ^50  to  ;£6o  in  these  special  fees;  and  in  case  any  one 
was  imprisoned,  his  bail  was  paid,  and  often,  also,  an 
allowance  of  ten  shillings  per  week  while  in  jail.  In  one 
case  recorded  by  Bransby  Cooper,  this  was  continued  at 
least  during  two  years.1  But  when  any  subject  was  spe- 
cially desired  by  an  enthusiastic  anatomist,  then  was  their 
carnival  of  extortion.  In  1783,  when 'O'Brien,  the  Irish 
giant  (whose  skeleton,  eight  feet  four  inches  high,  now 
adorns  the  Hunterian  Museum  of  the  College  of  Surgeons), 
was  in  failing  health,  John  Huntersent  his  servant  Howison 
to  watch  the  disposition  of  the  remains.  This  fact  unfor- 
tunately coming  to  the  knowledge  of  the  patient,  in  his 
unbounded  horror  of  the  surgeon's  scalpel  he  ordered  that 
after  death  his  body  should  be  watched  day  and  night 
till  a  leaden  coffin  could  be  made,  in  which  he  should  be 
taken  to  sea  and  buried  there.  Soon  afterwards  he  died, 
and  the  watchers  were  set.  Howison,  having  discovered 
the  tavern  where  they  refreshed  themselves  when  off  duty, 
soon  struck  a  bargain  with  one  of  them,  that  if  his  com- 
panions would  agree  to  it,  the  body  should  be  stolen  at 
night,  and  for  their  consent  the  watchers  were  to  receive 
£$o.  The  others,  satisfied  with  all  but  the  price,  de- 
manded ;£ioo,  which  Hunter  agreed  to  pay.  Finding 
him  so  eager,  they  soon  made  other  difficulties,  and 
again  and  again  increased  the  price  until  they  had  raised 
it  to  ^£500  !  Accordingly,  the  body  was  stolen  at  night, 
conveyed  in  Hunter's  own  carriage  to  his  dissecting- 
room,  and  immediately  prepared,  but  with  such  haste, 

1  Sir  A.  Cooper's  Life,  pp.  360-2  and  369. 


20  EARLY  HISTORY  OF 

for  fear  of  interruption,  that  the  bones  could  never  be 
properly  whitened.1 

O'Brien's  coffin  was  not  the  only  one  which  contained 
what  might  be  called  a  "  foreign  body"  when  the  clergy 
performed  the  burial  service.  Such  thefts  became  a  regu- 
lar part  of  the  trade,  and  if  a  night  intervened  between 
the  finding  of  a  body  and  the  holding  of  a  coroner's  in- 
quest, it  was  liable  to  disappear,  and  the  resurrectionist 
often  attended  the  inquest  to  see  the  astonishment  of  the 
jury.  Sometimes  they  picked  up  cases  of  apoplexy  in  the 
street,  carried  them  to  one  of  the  hospitals  as  relatives, 
claimed  the  body  after  death,  and  quickly  assuaged  their 
grief  with  the  guineas  from  the  anatomical  school  of 
another  hospital.  Patrick,  one  of  the  most  celebrated 
of  the  gang,  for  some  months  carried  on  successfully  the 
ruse  of  claiming  relationship  with  dying  men  and  women, 
whose  names  he  ascertained,  in  the  various  workhouses, 
and  his  career  was  only  cut  short  by  the  jealousy  of  a 
rival  named  Murphy,  who  denounced  him  to  the  authori- 
ties. But  Murphy  himself  adopted  a  similar  plan  on 
another  occasion.  Observing  one  day,  while  walking,  a 
neat  .meeting-house  with  a  paved  burial-ground,  in  which 
was  a  trap-door,  he  soon  returned  in  a  suit  of  solemn 
black,  seeking  a  quiet  sanctuary  for  the  remains  of  his 
wife.  Descending  into  the  vault  to  select  the  place  of 
her  repose,  while  the  back  of  the  sexton  was  turned  he 
quietly  slipped  the  bolts  of  the  trap-door,  and  that  very 
night,  entering  the  vault  by  this  means,  he  rifled  every 
body  there  of  the  teeth,  which,  as  porcelain  teeth  were 
then  unknown,  he  sold  to  the  dentists  at  a  net  gain 
of  ;£6o.  Once,  a  body  stolen  from  the  grave  was  sold  to 


1  Otley's  Life  of  John  Hunter,  pp.  106-7,  in  Palmer's  Ed.  of  Hunter's 
Works,  London,  1835. 


PRACTICAL   ANATOMY.  21 

Lizars,  in  Edinburgh,  and  paid  for ;  was  re-stolen  from 
Lizars's  dissecting-room  the  same  night  and  sold  to  Knox; 
the  scoundrels  netting  ^25  in  all,  and  without  the  possible 
fear  of  indictment,  least  of  all  for  their  second  theft ! 

Sometimes  adventurous  students  carried  the  plunder 
home  in  hackney-coaches,  and  this  gave  rise  occasionally 
to  amusing  adventures.  On  one  occasion,  the  hackman, 
aware  of  the  illegal  nature  of  his  passenger's  baggage, 
having  arrived  opposite  the  Bow  Street  police  headquar- 
ters, thrust  his  head  in  at  the  window,  and  said  to  the 
uneasy  occupant,  "The  fare,  sir,  to  the  hospital  is  a 
guinea,  you  know,  unless  you  wish  to  be  put  down  here." 
"Quite  right,  my  man,  drive  on,"  was  the  unhesitating 
reply. 

Along  with  the  debasing  qualities  necessarily  developed 
by  such  an  occupation,  came  also  some  of  the  more  envi- 
able qualities  of  body  and  mind.  Thus,  on  one  occasion, 
when  a  party  of  medicals,  headed  by  a  noted  Edinburgh 
surgeon,  were  discovered  in  a  city  churchyard,  the  chief 
actor  laid  hold  of  two  large  adults,  just  disinterred,  and, 
carrying  one  under  each  arm,  escaped  into  the  garden  of 
a  private  institution  under  the  stimulating  fire  of  blunder- 
busses. But  strategy  and  adroitness,  combined  with  brute 
force,  were  still  more  frequently  called  into  play.  A 
country  lad,  whose  disease  was  peculiar  and  his  skeleton 
much  desired,  had  been  buried  in  an  exposed  cemetery, 
in  a  fishing  village  on  the  Firth  of  Forth,  and  watchers 
were  set.  The  resurrectionists,  in  full  force,  attempted 
to  bribe  them,  to  outwit  them,  to  entrap  them,  but  all  to 
no  avail.  Weeks  passed  by,  and  the  excitement  was  grad- 
ually dying  out,  when,  one  evening,  at  dusk,  two  well- 
dressed  gentlemen,  smoking  their  cigars,  drove  up  in  a 
dog-cart  to  the  little  inn  and  alighted.  The  whip-hand 
gentleman  told  the  hostler  that  he  expected  a  livery  ser- 


22  EARLY  HISTORY  OF 

» 

vant  to  bring  a  parcel  for  him  which  was  to  be  placed  in 
the  box.  In  a  short  time  the  parcel  was  delivered,  and 
presently  the  two  gentlemen  returned  and  departed.  The 
sharp-eyed  stable-boy  could  not  help  remarking  that  the 
livery  servant  who  brought  the  parcel  "was  deuced  like 
the  off-side  gentleman,"  and  fancied  he  saw  a  bit  of 
scarlet  lining  under  his  brown  overcoat.  "  Haud  yer 
tongue,  Sandie,"  said  his  superior;  "ye're  aye  seeing 
farlies."  While  the  gentlemen  were  driving  away,  the 
watchers  were  approaching  the  grave,  and,  to  their  utmost 
astonishment,  it  had  been  despoiled.  Liston,  the  Edin- 
burgh surgeon,  and  Crouch,  the  London  resurrectionist, 
needed  but  thirty  minutes  for  such  work,  especially  by 
daylight.  All  the  detectives  were  put  upon  the  track, 
and  all  the  dissecting-rooms  searched,  but  in  vain.  Years 
afterwards,  skeleton  No.  3489,  with  the  donor's  name 
attached,  was  added  to  the  noblest  anatomical  collection 
in  Britain.1 

The  bodies  were  generally  left  in  the  night  in  bags, 
and  this  gave  them  occasionally  a  chance  too  good  to  be 
lost.  They  bagged  drunken  men  on  the  street  and  de- 
livered them  as  subjects,  sometimes  to  their  great  aston- 
ishment, at  others  with  their  connivance.  Mr.  Clift,  the 
curator  of  the  Hunterian  Museum,  was  once  thus  waked 
up  while  a  student  with  John  Hunter,  and  two  bags  de- 
livered and  paid  for  on  the  spot.  The  men  had  gone 
but  a  few  steps  when  Mr.  Clift  perceived  the  swindle, 
and,  though  in  his  night-clothes,  he  ran  after  them, 
collared  the  principal,  and  said  to  him,  "You've  left  me 

1  These  details,  and  many  others  equally  interesting  and  amusing,  may 
be  found  in  the  account  of  the  Resurrectionists,  in  the  Life  of  Sir  Astley 
Cooper,  vol.  i.  pp.  334-448,  and  in  Lonsdale's  Life  of  Robert  Knox,  the 
Anatomist,  pp.  47-116.  The  comic  side  of  the  subject  may  be  seen  in 
Hood's  "  Jack  Hall"  (Jackal),  in  his  Whims  and  Oddities. 


PRACTICAL   ANATOMY.  23 

a  live  man."  "I  know  it,"  said  the  man,  shaking  off 
his  hold  and  escaping  with  the  money;  "you  can  kill 
him  when  you  want  him."  ' 

But  such  a  degrading  occupation  necessarily  debased 
the  men  to  the  level  of  any  crime.  The  increasing 
number  of  students  leading  to  a  growing  demand  for 
subjects,  and  the  increased  vigilance  of  the  police  adding 
to  the  difficulty  of  procuring  them,  the  fears  of  medical 
men  that  murder  would  be  resorted  to  were  soon  realized. 
In  1827  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  with  nine  hundred 
students  in  its  class,  for  the  first  time  made  dissection 
compulsory,  and  thus  greatly  stimulated  the  demand. 
London,  Liverpool,  and  Dublin  all  in  turn  supplied  the 
want,  but  the  prices  obtained  soon  gave  rise  to  the 
horrible  crimes  of  Bishop,2  in  London,  and  Wm.  Burke, 
in  Edinburgh ;  the  latter,  from  the  atrocity  of  his  crimes, 
being  made  eternally  infamous  by  giving  his  name  to  the 
crime  of  "Burking." 

His  trial,  twenty-four  hours  long,  one  "of  unexampled 
length,"  said  the  judge,  by  curious  contrast  to  our  more 
tardy  justice,  took  place  December  24,  1828.  After  his 
conviction  he  made  a  confession  of  all  his  many  crimes. 

1  The  late  Prof.  S.  H.  Dickson  informed  me  that  he  had  this  not  uncom- 
mon "Joe  Miller"  of  the  present  day  from  Mr.  Clift  personally. 

2  I  found  this  man's  crimes  alluded  to  several  times  in  the  Lancet, 
1832-3,  vol.  i.  pp.  244,  341,  568,  when  first  preparing  this  lecture;  but, 
notwithstanding  the  most  thorough  search,  I  was  unable  to  obtain  any  of 
the  particulars,  save  that  he  and  a  man  named  Williams  murdered  an 
Italian  boy,  and  were  betrayed  by  Hill,  the  dissecting-room  porter  at 
King's  College.     Since  then,  Dr.  J.  F.  Clarke  has  published  his  "Auto- 
biographical Recollections  of  the  Profession."     In  this  entertaining  book 
(pp.  100-104,  and  the  Medical  Times  and  Gazette,  March  n,  1871)  a  full 
account  of  the  facts  is  given.     A  curious  bit  of  history  is  added  in  the 
London  letter  of  the  Philadelphia  Medical  Times  of  May  17,  1873,  P 
524,  showing  how  the  murderers  were  detected  by  the  sagacity  of  the 
late  Mr.  Partridge. 


24  EARLY  HISTORY  OF 

While  he  and  his  mistress,  Helen  McDougall,  were  lodging 
with  a  man  by  the  name  of  Hare,  one  of  the  lodgers  died 
owing  Hare  £4.  They  took  the  body  to  Dr.  Knox,  and 
sold  it  for  £7  -LOS.  Finding  it  so  profitable,  the  three 
then  proceeded  to  smother  every  available  lodger  who  fell 
into  their  hands,  and,  in  the  year  that  elapsed  before  their 
detection,  sixteen  persons  had  thus  been  murdered.  Burke 
was  executed  Jan.  28,  1829,  and,  by  order  of  the  judge, 
like  Anton  Probst  in  this  very  city,  was  publicly  dissected.1 
His  skeleton  is  in  the  Anatomical  Museum  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  Edinburgh,2  and  from  his  tanned  skin  John 
Arthur,  afterwards  janitor  to  Prof.  John  Goodsir,  had 
made  a  tobacco-pouch,  which  he  carried  for  many  years 
as  a  memento  of  the  period  when  he  first  became  con- 
nected with  the  dissecting-room.3 

Such  crimes  called  public  attention  to  the  imperative 
necessity  of  a  proper  source  of  supply  for  dissecting  ma- 
terial. The  Warburton  anatomy  bill  accordingly  was 
enacted  August  i,  1832,  giving  all  unclaimed  bodies, 
under  proper  regulations,  to  the  various  schools.  This 
has  been  the  model  for  all  subsequent  acts,  our  own  passed 
but  six  years  ago  among  them.  For  several  years  there 
were  loud  complaints  as  to  its  operation, 4>ut  experience 
gradually  removed  its  difficulties,  and  now  it  supplies  all 
the  schools  well,  and  at  moderate  prices.  The  price  in 
Edinburgh  at  present  is  $3  per  part.4  Our  own  act  is 

1  Lancet,  1828-9;  his  trial,  pp.  424-31 ;  his  confession,  pp.  667-8. 

2  Lonsdale's  Life  of  Knox,  p.  76,  note.     This  book  contains  a  very 
full  account  of  the  career  of  Burke  and  Hare,  and  their  relations  with 
Knox. 

3  Goodsir's  Anatom.  Memoirs,  vol.  i.  p.  163,  note. 

4  Really  the  price  of  a  "part"  in  Edinburgh  is  but  6.r.  ($1.50),  but  the 
body  is  divided  into  ten  parts — two  each  to  the  head,  the  thorax,  and  the 
abdomen,  and  one  to  each  of  the  four  extremities.    The  body  lies  on  its 


PRACTICAL   ANATOMY.  25 

suffering  the  same  trial.  Obstinacy  and  knavery  are  com- 
bined to  defeat  it,  but  I  do  not  doubt  that  in  the  end  it 
will  gain  the  victory,  and  afford  us  an  ample  supply  worthy 
of  a  great  medical  centre. 

Not  only,  however,  do  we  have  an  immense  advantage 
in  these  days  over  the  so-called  good  old  times  in  the 
facility  of  obtaining  material,  but  also  our  means  of  pur- 
suing practical  anatomy  are  vastly  more  perfect  and  more 
prolific. 

In  the  Museum  of  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians  the 
curious  observer  will  notice  "six  tablets  or  boards  upon 
which  are  spread  the  different  nerves  and  blood-vessels, 
carefully  dissected,"  removed  from  the  body  and  dried. 
"In  one  of  them  the  semilunar  valves  of  the  aorta  are 
distinctly  to  be  seen."1  Such  are  the,  to  us,  wretched 
preparations  with  which  Harvey  illustrated  his  lectures  on 
the  circulation,  and  they  were  probably  used  before  his 
royal  patron,  when  he  demonstrated  his  wonderful  dis- 
covery to  Charles  I.  He  made  them  probably  at  Padua, 
under  the  eye  of  Fabricius,  the  re-discoverer  of  the  valves 
in  the  veins.2  If  any  one  compares  them  with  our  splendid 
preparations  and  models,  how  insignificant  they  seem  ! 
But  they  were  among  the  first  essays  in  a  new  art  whose 
benefits  are  still  felt  by  all  medical  students. 

back  for  three  days  to  give  time  to  have  the  thorax  and  abdomen  opened 
and  examined,  and  the  perineum  dissected;  then  on  its  belly,  for  dissec- 
tion of  the  muscles  of  the  back  and  of  the  spinal  cord.  Each  man  then 
soon  removes  his  own  extremity,  and  dissects  it  separately. 

1  Harlan's  Gannal's  Hist,  of  Embalming,  p.  258,  and  Gold-headed 
Cane,  pp.  127-8.     Similar  preparations  are  in  the  College  of  Surgeons, 
purchased  in  Padua,  by  John  Evelyn,  made  by  Fabritius  Bartoletus,  then 
Veslengius's  assistant,  and  afterwards  physician  to  the  King  of  Poland. 

2  Charles  Etiennes  (Carolus  Stephanus)  was  the  first  who  properly  un- 
derstood the  valves  in  the  veins.    He  speaks  of  them  (in  his  "  De  Dissec. 

3 


26  EARLY  HISTORY  OF 

Carpi,1  Etiennes,2  and  Eustachius,3  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  and  Malpighi,4  Glisson,5  and  Willis,6  in  the 
seventeenth,  had  used  air,  water,  milk,  ink,  and  other 
colored  fluids,  with  which  to  inject  and  trace  the  vessels. 
In  Holland,  however,  the  first  substantial  progress  was 
made.  DeGraaf,  about  1668,  improved  the  syringe,  and 
injected  mercury  into  the  spermatic  vessels.7  Swammer- 
dam,  Ruysch,  and  Albinus,  however,  really  created  and 
diffused  the  knowledge  of  the  art  of  injections.  Swam- 

part.  Corp.  Hum.,"  Paris,  1545,  quoted  in  Hyrtl's  Zerglied.,  p.  585, 
note),  as  "  apophyses  membranarum"  which  obviate  the  danger  from  re- 
gurgitation.  This  anticipates  by  two  years  Cananus,  who,  in  1547,  when 
Fabricius  was  but  ten  years  old,  demonstrated  the  valves  in  the  azygos 
veins.  Aiken's  Bibl.  Med.  "  Harvey,"  p.  312,  and  Bayle  et  Thillaye,  op. 
cit.,  i.  p.  234. 

1  Prof.,  in  Pavia  and  Bologna,  1502-1527.     He  is  the  first  who  speaks 
of  injections,  when  treating  of  the  renal  vessels  "per  syringam  aqua 
callida  plenam."     Isagoga  brevis  in  Anat.  Corp.  Hum.    Bonon.  1522,  in 
Hyrtl,  Zerglied.,  p.  585. 

2  He  blew  air  into  the  veins  by  a  metal  tube.   Hyrtl,    Zerglied.,  p 
585. 

3  Eustachius,  says  Portal  (Hist,  de  1' Anatomic,  Paris,  1770,  torn.  i.  p. 
634),  injected  "  fluids  of  various  colors  and  densities." 

*  Malpighi  used  ink  and  other  fluids  assiduously,  and  by  them  made 
various  discoveries  in  the  kidney  and  elsewhere. 

5  Glisson  injected  the  liver  with  ink.   Hyrtl,  Zerglied.,  p.  586.  Portal, 
iii.  261. 

6  Willis  injected  the  brain  with  "aqua  crocata."    He  discovered  the 
"Circle  of  Willis"  by  this  means.    The  tubes  of  Bellini  in  the  kidneys 
were  discovered  in  a  similar  manner.     The  pains  anatomists  took  at  that 
time  were  even  so  great  that  a  preparation  by  Hildanus  (A.D.  1624)  is 
said  to  exist  in  Berne,  which  exhibits  the  entire  venous  system  dissected 
out  by  means  of  their  distension  by  air,  and  the  hundreds  of  ligatures 
that  it  would  require.    Hyrtl,  Zerglied.,  pp.  586-7. 

7  Encyc.  Brit.,  vol.  ii.  p.  761.  Portal,  Hist,  de  1'Anat.,  torn.  iii.  pp.  220-1, 
261.      Strangely  enough,    Hyrtl    ( Zerglied.,   p.   587),   who    is    usually 
So  exact,  attributes  the  first  mercurial  injections  to  Nuck,  whose  work 
(Adenogr.  Curios.  Leydae,  1692)  was  published  twenty-four  years  later 
than  De  Graaf's  "  De  Usu  Siphonis." 


PRACTICAL  ANATOMY.  27 

merdam  saw  that  in  order  to  fulfil  its  purpose  the  material 
used  ought  to  be  injected  as  a  fluid  and  yet  solidify  in  the 
vessels,  and  not  evaporate  as  water  did.  He  first  used 
suet;  in  1667  he  substituted  wax,  and  in  1672  he  sent  to 
the  Royal  Society  a  preparation  thus  injected.1  His  suc- 
cess was  such  that  in  his  best  preparations  he  filled  even 
the  arteries  of  the  skin  of  the  face.  Two  years  later  he 
gave  up  anatomy  as  impious,  joined  the  party  of  a  religious 
fanatic,  and  died  in  1680. 

Before  relinquishing  his  profession  he  made  his  method 
public  in  Amsterdam,  Paris,  and  London,  and  gave  special 
instruction  to  his  friend  and  fellow-townsman,  Ruysch, 
who  pushed  the  art  so  far  that  he  was  said  to  believe  that 
the  body  was  almost  wholly  made  up  of  vessels.2  Leu- 
wenhoeck,  another  citizen  of  Leyden,  had  fortunately 
just  at  this  time  invented,  or  rather  made  really  available, 
the  microscope,3  and  thus  Ruysch  was  enabled  not  only 
to  inject  finer  vessels  directly,  but  also  to  discover,  as  re- 
sults of  his  injections,  networks  of  vessels  hitherto  un- 
suspected.4 His  first  trials  were  made  on  the  bodies  of 


1  Portal,  Hist,  de  1'Anat.,  Hi.  334. 

2  This  erroneous  belief  (totum  corpus  ex  vasculis)  was  really  held  by 
Ruysch   and  nearly  all  his  contemporaries.      "Antoine  Ferrein,"  says 
Sprengel  (Hist,  de  la  Med.,  torn.  iv.  p.  338),  "was  the  only  one  who  ad- 
vocated the  parenchyma  of  the  organs  against  Ruysch  and  Malpighi." 
It  was  long  held  by  Boerhaave's  school  also. 

3  Magnifying  lenses  of  rock  crystal  were  found  in  the  palace  of  Nim- 
roud,  by  Layard.     The  compound  microscope  was  invented  by  Hans 
Zansz,  spectacle-maker,  at  Middleburg,  Holland,  in  1590.     Encyc.  Brit., 
8th  ed.,  art.  "  Microscope,"  p.  801. 

4  He  discovered  the  vasa  vasorum,  the  bronchial  arteries,  the  vessels  of 
the  middle  layer  of  the  choroid,  called  the  "  Tunica  Ruyschiana"  (though 
this  was  first  accurately  described  by  Zinn,  in  1755), the  finervessels  in  the 
serous  and  synovial  membranes,  the  pia  and  dura  matres,  the  corpora 
cavernosa,  and  many  parenchymata.    Hyrtl,  Zerglied.,p.  594-    Sprengel, 
Hist,  de  la  Med.,  torn.  iv.  pp.  144,  233,  277-8. 


28  EKRL  Y  HISTOR  Y  OF 

infants,  but  finally,  when,  in  1666,  Admiral  Berkeley  was 
killed  and  his  body  captured  in  the  memorable  four  days' 
fight  between  the  English  and  the  Dutch  fleets,  Ruysch 
successfully  embalmed  his  body  by  order  of  the  States 
General,  and  sent  it  back  to  England  with  an  almost  nat- 
ural appearance.1  Such  was  his  success,3  says  M.  Fonte- 
nelle,  that  he  seemed  not  only  to  preserve  men  after  death, 
but  rather  to  prolong  their  life.  At  the  close  of  his  long 
career  they  remained  perfectly  preserved,  with  their  orig- 
inal softness,  flexibility,  and  color. 

In  his  museum,  which  was  called  the  eighth  wonder  of 
the  world,  the  dittce  and  the  utile  were  elegantly  combined. 
Flowers,  ornamental  shell-work,  and  rarities  worthy  a 
royal  cabinet  were  interspersed  with  skeletons,  injections, 
and  other  anatomical  pieces,3  and  many  of  them,  especially 
the  fcetal  skeletons,  were  labelled  with  appropriate  and  in- 
structive mottoes.  Thus,  one  who  did  not  attain  to  even 
uterine  maturity  holds  an  inflated  bladder  aloft,  and 
teaches  us  the  shortness  of  life  in  its  motto,  "Homo 
Bulla," — "Man  but  a  bubble."  Another  holding  a  prep- 

1  Bayle  et  Thillaye,  op.  cit.,  vol.  i.  p.  528.    Portal,  Hist,  de  1'Anat.,  torn, 
iii.  p.  262.     So  natural  was  one  infant's  body  that  Peter  the  Great  is  said 
to  have  kissed  it. 

2  Hyrtl  (Zerglied.,  p.  597)  found  the  process  described  by  J.  Ch.  Rieger 
(Introd.  in  notitiam  rerum  natural,  et  artefact.,  etc.     Hagse,  1743,  4to,  2 
vols.)  under  "Animal"  (vol.  i.)  and  "  Balsamus"  (vol.  ii.  pp.  54-7).    The 
latter  contains  a  copy  of  Ruysch's  autograph  directions  as  to  his  mode  of 
injection  and  preservation.      The  following  are  extracts:  "Pro  materie 
ceracea  sumendum  sebitm,  et  quidem  tempore  hyemali  simplex — aestivo 
tempore  exiguum  frustum  cerce  alba  addendum.      Liquefactse  materise 
additur  cinnabaris  factitise  quantitas  sufficiens,  aut  quantum  vis,  idque 
movendo,  donee  bene  permixta  sit  cinnabaris.  Liquor  meus  est  spiritus,  e 
vino,  vel  frumento  confcctus,  cui  si  addere  velimus  in  destillatione  manipu- 
lum  piperis  iiigri,  eo  acrius  penetrat  per  carnosa  spartes." 

3  Bayle  et  Thillaye,  op.  cit,  vol.  i.  p.  529.     The  plates  in  his  "  The- 
saurus Anatomicus,"  i.-vi.,  Amstel.,  1701,  in  my  own  library,  illustrate 
these  quaint  but  withal  artistic  arrangements. 


PRACTICAL   ANATOMY. 


29 


aration  of  the  lymphatics  showing  their  valves,  which  was 
made  twenty-five  years  before,  and  not  long  after  their 
first  discovery  by  Aselius,  in  1622,  reminds  you  they  are 
"as  difficult  as  beautiful."  A  third,  a  uterus  containing 
a  foetus,  hints  at  a  questionable  paternity  :  "  Quo  minime 
credis  gurgite  piscis  erit," — "Fish  may  be  found  in  least 
suspected  pools."  A  still-born  child's  motto,  "  Hsec 
mihi  prima  dies,  haec  mihi  summa  fuit," — "This  my  first 
day  was  my  last,"  reminds  one  of  the  laconic  epitaph  in 
a  similar  case — 

"  If  I  was  so  soon  to  be  done  for, 
What  was  I  ever  begun  for?" 

And  the  head  of  a  noted  woman  of  Leyden,  whose  finger 
points  to  the  syphilitic  perforations  of  her  skull,  has  the 
warning  motto,  "  In  similar  waters  similar  fish  are  found."  l 
The  museum  was  the  admiration  of  all  distinguished  men 
at  home  and  abroad.  Generals,  ambassadors,  princes, 
and  even  kings  delighted  to  visit  it,  and  spend  whole  days 
with  its  author.2  Peter  the  Great,  when  in  Holland,  in 
1 698,  thus  divided  his  time  with  Leuwenhoeck  and  Ruysch : 
he  attended  the  lectures  of  the  latter,  and  became  an 
earnest  student  of  medicine.  He  always  carried  a  small 
surgical  case.  He  learned  to  draw  teeth,  to  bleed,  and 
to  dissect.  So  enthusiastic  a  pupil  did  he  prove  that  he 
always  occupied  the  front  seat,  and  during  one  of  the  lec- 
tures he  leaped  up  and  was  about  to  seize  the  scalpel  the 
master  held.3  The  Czar's  surgical  operations,  however, 
did  not  prove  so  successful,  for  a  Dutch  merchant's  wife 

1  Ruysch,  "  Museum  Anatomicum."  An  Appendix  to  his  Opera  Cra- 
nia Anat.  Med.  Chirur.,  4to,  Amstel.,  1721,  pp.  no,  158,  156,  173-4,  and 
163  respectively.  (In  the  Library  of  the  College  of  Physicians.) 

a  Portal,  Hist,  de  1'Anat.,  torn.  iii.  p.  262. 

3  Life  of  Peter  the  Great.     London,  1832. 
3* 


3° 


EARLY  HISTORY  OF 


whom  he  tapped  died  soon  after,  but  the  Czar,  by  way  of 
consolation,  attended  the  funeral.  On  his  return  to  Ley- 
den,  in  1717,  he  purchased  Ruysch's  museum  for  30,000 
florins,  and  sent  it  to  St.  Petersburg.  Ruysch,  though 
seventy-nine  years  old,  immediately  went  to  work  on 
another.  When  his  son,  his  efficient  assistant,  died,  in 
1727,  he  pressed  his  two  daughters  into  the  work,  and  so 
diligent  had  he  been  that  after  his  death,  in  1731  (set. 
ninety-three),  his  second  museum  was  sold  to  Stanislaus, 
King  of  Poland,  for  20,000  florins.1 

1  These  are  the  statements  generally  made  as  to  their  disposition  on  the 
authority  of  Burggrseve,  Precis  de  1'Hist.  de  1'Anat.,  Gand,  1840,  pp.  295-6. 
Hyrtl  states  (Zerglied.,  p.  592,  note)  that  Heister  asserts  in  the  Preface  to 
Vater's  Museum  Anat.  propr.,  Helmst.,  1750,  that  the  second  museum  was 
bought  by  Fred.  Aug.  I.,  Elector  of  Saxony,  from  Ruysch's  heirs,  and 
carried  to  Dresden.  Fred.  Aug.  II.  sent  it  to  Wittenberg,  and  Vater, 
Ruysch's  pupil,  then  Professor  of  Anatomy  in  the  University,  made  a 
catalogue  of  it  (Regii  Mus.  Anat.  August  Catal.  Univ.  Vittebergse,  1736). 
Haller  (Bibl.  Anat.,  torn.  ii.  p.  43)  says  of  this  collection:  "  Aliquse  partes 
carp,  hum.  ex  Ruyschii  thesauris  coemtse,  aliqua  undique  collecta." 

The  question  is  often  asked,  "What  became  of  Ruysch's  prepara- 
tions?" Conflicting  statements  are  made,  some  stating  they  exist  at  the 
present  day  in  perfect  preservation.  (Bayle  et  Thillaye,  vol.  ii.  p.  85,  Par- 
son's Anat.  Prep.,  Pref.,  p.  v.)  I  am  glad,  therefore,  to  be  able  to  give  so 
valuable  an  opinion  as  that  of  Prof.  Hyrtl,  which  being  founded  on  per- 
sonal observation  is  both  interesting  and  decisive.  He  says  (Zerglied.,  pp. 

593-3).— 

"  Ruysch's  fame  outlasted  his  collections,  and  the  many  preparations 
which  he  expected  to  preserve,  '  per  liquorem  suum  balsamicum  seternos 
in  annos1,  no  longer  exist.  In  the  Leyden  Anatom.  Museum  Prof.  Hal- 
bertsma  showed  me  a  planta  pedis  which  it  is  thought  was  injected  by 
Ruysch.  In  the  Greifswald  Museum  I  saw  two  others  which,  it  is  asserted, 
are  Ruysch's  injections.  They  came  from  Vater's  private  collection  ("  Mus. 
Anat.  prop."  above).  The  preparations  sent  to  him  by  Ruysch  (with 
whom  he  was  in  uninterrupted  relations)  are  especially  noted  as  such. 
After  Vater's  death  the  collection  passed  into  the  hands  of  his  successor 
Langguth.andat  the  dissolution  of  the  University  of  Wittenberg  was  bought 
by  an  apothecary  for  the  glass  !  By  him  a  part  vyas  sold  to  Prof.  Schultze, 
in  GrciLwakl,  when  travelling  through  Wittenberg.  In  the  Museum  at 


PRACTICAL   ANATOMY.  31 

What  in  Ruysch's  time  was  a  profound  secret,  is  in  our 
day  a  common  art.  By  the  help  of  many  workers  in  the 
same  field1  our  means  of  injection  are  greatly  increased, 

Prague,  also,  I  found  three  small  preparations — an  injected  finger,  a  piece 
of  intestinal  mucous  membrane,  and  a  child's  hand — whose  mode  of  pres- 
ervation so  exactly  corresponded  with  that  in  Ruysch's  Thesaurus  Ana- 
tomicus  that  they  are  most  likely  the  work  of  this  masterhand,  and  were 
probably  among  those  collected  by  Du  Toy,  Prof.  Anatomy  at  Prague  in 
the  first  half  of  the  last  century,  in  his  scientific  tour  in  the  Netherlands. 
Even  in  the  Vienna  Museum,  according  to  Schwediauer,  towards  the  end 
of  the  last  century  some  of  Ruysch's  preparations  were  to  be  found. 
Those  at  Prague  I  have  examined,  and  found  them  entirely  worthless." 
On  page  595  he  speaks  of  them  as  "scarcely  to  be  recognized  as  injections 
of  the  vessels,"  and  of  the  "  ruined  specimens  in  Greifswald  and  Prague 
.  .  .  which  through  long  continuance  in  spirit  (liquor  balsamicus)  are 
brittle,  and  by  the  development  of  the  fatty  acids  are  discolored  and 
reduced  to  a  grayish-brown  and  crumbling  pasty  mass  (Teig) — extrava- 
sation everywhere." 

The  Russian  collection,  howevrt',  Hyrtl  seems  not  to  have  examined, 
and  it  is  with  pleasure,  therefore,  that  I  can  state  both  on  the  authority  of 
a  letter  from  E.  Schuyler,  Esq.,  of  the  U.  S.  Legation  at  St.  Petersburg 
(see  the  letter  in  the  Phila.  Med.  Times,  Feb.  i,  1872,  p.  173),  and  another 
private  letter  from  Prof.  Pelechin,  Assist.  Prof.  Surg.  in  the  Imperial  Med- 
ical School  of  St.  Petersburg,  that  Ruysch's  cabinet  forms  at  the  present 
time  part  of  the  Anatomical  Museum  of  the  Imperial  Academy  of  Sci- 
ences, and  is  in  an  excellent  state  of  preservation,  the  injections  being  per- 
fect. Unfortunately,  a  small  piece  of  a  foetal  intestine  sent  me  by  Prof. 
Pelechin  for  microscopical  sections  was  destroyed  by  the  carelessness  of  a 
third  person.  It  was  perfectly  preserved,  and  looked  very  like  a  success- 
ful vascular  injection. 

1  Restricted  as  I  was  in  time,  I  was  unable  to  develop  many  points  as  I 
would  gladly  have  done  had  time  allowed.  The  principal  cultivators  of 
the  art  of  injections  since  Ruysch  are  as  follows :  Alex.  Monro  primus 
added  the  stopcock  to  the  injecting  tubes,  and  used  double  injections,  viz., 
glue  to  fill  the  finer  vessels,  followed  by  wax  for  the  coarser.  None  of  his 
preparations  remain  even  in  Edinburgh.  Hyrtl,  Zerglied.,  p.  599. 

Lieberkuhn  (Berlin,  1711-46)  was  the  first  whose  injections  really  stood 
the  test  of  the  microscope,  and  are  worthy  of  comparison  with  the  prepa- 
rations made  at  present.  Sixty-six  of  them  are  in  the  Vienna  Museum, 
each  in  the  focus  of  one  of  his  simple  microscopes  which  are  attached  to 
the  slides.  He  first  made  the  joint  between  the  syringe  and  the  arterial 


32 


EARL  Y  HISTOR  Y  OF 


and  our  results,  though  to  the  eye  they  do  not  reach  those 
popularly  ascribed  to  Ruysch,  yet  for  diffusing  the  knowl- 
edge of  anatomy  among  the  profession,  and  for  anatomi- 
cal and  microscopical  research,  they  are  vastly  better.  In- 
jections of  plaster  of  Paris,1  wax,  paint,  glue,2  ether,  and 
rubber  every  one  can  now  make,  and  the  wonderfully 
beautiful  results  of  Hyrtl,  Gerlach,  Beale,  and  Thiersch 
are  only  equalled  by  the  ingenuity  of  Chrzonszczewsky, 
who  has  recently  effected  the  physiological  injection  of 
the  bile-ducts  by  coloring  the  bile  and  then  tying  the 
hepatic  duct.  Bidloo,  in  Amsterdam,  in  1685,  and  Cow- 
per  and  Nicholls,  of  Oxford,3  a  little  later,  added  to  our 

tube  air-tight  by  means  of  friction  instead  of  a  screw.  The  wings  by 
which  it  is  now  held  were  as  yet  unknown,  and  were  replaced  by  a  hook. 
He  used  wax,  resin,  turpentine,  and  cinnabar.  Hyrtl,  op.  cit.,  p.  602. 

In  the  present  century,  Shaw's  "cold  paint  injection"  (see  Parson's 
Anat.  Preps.,  pp.  2-3,  and  Horner's  Pract.  Anat.,  Introd.,  pp.  xviii.  and 
xix.,  where  this  is  attributed  to  Allan  Ramsay)  has  been  largely  used. 
Bowman's  double  cold  injection  by  acetate  of  lead  followed  by  chromate 
of  potash,  both  in  solution,  Voigt's  solution  of  glue,  Gerlach's  of  carmine, 
Beale's  of  Prussian  blue,  etc.,  have  all  been  admirable.  No  one  has  done 
more  to  advance  the  art  than  Hyrtl  himself,  who  was  the  first  to  make 
preparations  of  two,  three,  and  four  different  colored  injections,  and  has 
left  no  kingdom,  family,  or  genus  whose  anatomy  is  not  illustrated  by  his 
splendid  researches.  No  medical  man  should  visit  this  city  without 
inspecting  the  splendid  collection  of  his  injected,  and  especially  his  cor- 
roded, preparations,  recently  purchased  (1874)  by  the  College  of  Physi- 
cians for  the  Mutter  Museum.  They  are  the  most  superb  specimens  of 
anatomical  preparations  I  have  ever  seen. 

1  First  used  by  Trew  (Commerc.  Liter.  Noricum,  1732,  p.  298),  and 
now  in  use  generally  in  this  country  and  in  Berlin,  while  wax  in  various 
forms  and  combinations  is  used  in  Edinburgh,  London,  Heidelberg,  Paris, 
Vienna,  etc. 

»  First  used  by  P.  S.  Rouhault,  Surgeon  to  the  King  of  Sardinia,  1718. 
Hyrtl,  Zerglied.,  pp.  589-90. 

3  Wm.  Hunter  (Introd.  Lect.,  p.  56),  and  following  him  most  other  Eng- 
lish writers  (e.g.,  Gold-headed  Cane,  p.  129;  Horner's  Anat.,  Introd.,  pp. 
xiv.-xv.,  note),  give  the  sole  credit  of  this  beautiful  invention  to  Prof. 


PRACTICAL  ANATOMY. 


33 


means  of  illustration  by  injecting  the  vessels  and  hollow 
viscera  with  wax  or  metal,  and  then  corroding  or  macerat- 
ing the  animal  textures,  leaving  the  injection  as  their  per- 
fect representative.  Auzoux's  splendid  models  have  won 
for  him  the  cross  of  the  Legion  of  Honor.1  Suchet,  about 
1850,  revived  the  Egyptian  method  of  tanning,  but,  unfor- 
tunately and  wrongfully,  kept  the  process  a  profound  secret. 
In  1867,  at  the  Paris  Exposition,  in  noble  contrast  to  this 
illiberal  spirit,  Brunetti,  of  Padua,  explained  to  the  Paris 
Medical  Congress,  in  the  crowded  amphitheatre  of  the 
Ecole  de  Medecine,  his  method  of  tanning  by  which  he 
had  made  the  astonishing  preparations  which  he  then  ex- 
hibited. For  durability,  preservation  of  form  and  struc- 
ture, both  anatomical  and  pathological,  even  to  microscopic 
exactness,  they  are  unrivalled,  and  he  was  rewarded  with 
a  special  gold  medal,  as  well  deserved  as  was  the  applause 
his  liberal  spirit  elicited  from  an  appreciative  audience.2 
Still  later  (1873),  Dr.  Marini,  of  Naples,  exhibited  at  the 

Nicholls.  Hyrtl,  however,  places  the  credit  further  back  and  of  right  with 
Bidloo  (Anat.  Corp.  Human.,  Amstel.,  1685),  who  injected  melted  bismuth 
into  the  lungs,  and  Cowper  (The  Anat.  of  Human  Bodies,  Oxford,  1697), 
who  used  lead  (Hyrtl,  Zerglied.,  p.  604).  Possibly  Nicholls  was  the  first 
thus  to  prepare  the  vessels. 

1  Plastic  models  are  now  made  by  Auzoux  with  great  beauty  and  exact- 
ness, and  the  history  of  their  development  may  be  found  hi  the  New  Amer. 
Cyc.,  first  ed.,  vol.  i.pp.  517-8,  and  vol.'ii.  p.  409.  In  1823,  in  the  re-organi- 
zation of  the  universities  to  get  rid  of  the  materialism  of  the  French  Revo- 
lution, the  old  prejudices  against  dissection  were  revived.  In  consequence  of 
the  difficulties  thus  thrown  in  the  way  of  dissection,  it  occurred  to  Auzoux, 
in  1825,  to  make  models  in  papier-mache.    In  1830  the  invention  was  per- 
fected, and  Auzoux  now  employs  from  sixty  to  eighty  hands  in  his  manu- 
factory, and  supplies  the  world  with  his  models  (of  which  he  makes  about 
two  hundred),  both  in  human,  comparative,  and  vegetable  anatomy. 

2  See  Med.  News  and  Library,  Jan.  1868.    I  have  in  my  possession  now 
two  specimens  of  tubercle  and  cirrhosis  of  the  liver,  kindly  sent  me  by 
Prof.  Brunetti,  which  are  witnesses  to  the  excellence  of  his  method.    The 
color  is,  of  course,  destroyed  by  the  alcohol  and  the  tanning. 


34  EARLY  HISTORY  OF 

Vienna  Exposition  some  anatomical  preparations  made 
by  some  new  methods  (which  he  also  wrongfully  keeps 
secret),  which,  it  is  asserted,  after  ten  years,  retain  all 
their  original  freshness  and  natural  appearance  even  to 
the  fatty  tissues.  The  body  of  Thalberg  has  been  thus 
preserved  for  the  adornment  of  his  widow's  drawing-room.1 

Dissections  having  for  their  object  such  permanent  prepa- 
rations cannot  be  made  in  haste.  They  require  consider- 
able time.  So  too  dissections  for  a  series  of  lectures  on 
various  systems,  such  as  the  muscular,  the  vascular,  etc., 
require  that  we  shall  be  able  to  preserve  the  body  unless 
we  go  back  to  the  short  courses  of  bygone  days.  Thus, 
in  Edinburgh,  in  1697,  in  the  first  course  of  public  lectures, 
as  the  felon's  body  by  law  had  to  be  buried  in  ten  days, 
ten  lectures  were  delivered  on  successive  days  by  as  many- 
different  lecturers,  in  which  the  entire  subject  was  treated. 
How  hurried  the  course  was  we  may  judge,  seeing  that  on 
one  day  the  brain,  spinal  cord,  and  all  the  nerves  were  fin- 
ished, and  on  another,  all  of  the  five  senses.2  But  when 
we  go  back  to  Mondini  in  1315,  we  find  him  the  embodi- 
ment of  brevity,  for  he  completed  the  anatomy,  physi- 
ology, and  surgery  of  the  entire  body  in  five  lectures. 

The  first  example  we  have  of  the  use  of  preservative 

1  Med.  News  and  Library,  Nov.  1873,  p.  183  ;  Med.  Times  and  Gaz., 
Sept.  6,  1873. 

a  Edin.  Med.  Journal,  Oct.  1866,  p.  294.  The  meagre  number  of  lec- 
tures on  important  branches  in  later  times  also  is  striking.  Thus,  Mr. 
Bronfield,  of  St.  George's  Hospital,  delivered  but  thirty-six  lectures  on 
anatomy  and  surgery,  Dr.  Nicholls,  William  Hunter's  teacher,  lectured  on 
anatomy,  physiology,  pathology,  and  midwifery  in  thirty-nine,  and  Mr. 
Nource,  at  St.  Bartholomew's,  embraced  "  totam  rem  anatomicam"  in 
twenty-three  lectures.  (John  Hunter's  Life,  p.  4,  note.)  William  Hunter 
enlarged  the  number  of  lectures  on  anatomy  alone  to  eighty-six,  about 
the  present  length  of  such  a  course. 


PRACTICAL   ANATOMY. 


35 


means  is  in  the  now  familiar  Egyptian  mummies.  Be- 
lieving in  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  and  that  they  could 
retain  the  soul  within  the  body  so  long  as  its  form  was 
preserved  entire,  it  was  very  natural  that  the  Egyptians 
should  endeavor  to  do  by  art  what  nature  showed  them  to 
be  possible  in  the  desiccated  mummies  of  the  deserts  around 
them.  Various  methods  were  adopted,  of  which  we  have  a 
short  description  in  the  embalming  of  Jacob's  body  in  Gen- 
esis,1 and  at  a  greater  length  in  Herodotus  and  Diodorus 
Siculus.  Three  principal  modes  existed,  differing  chiefly 
in  expense.  The  cheapest  was  available  to  even  the  poor, 
the  second  cost  about  $450,  and  the  third  about  $1250." 
In  the  last,  having  removed  the  brain  and  its  membranes 
through  the  nostrils,  by  breaking  through  the  ethmoid  bone 
with  a  curved  piece  of  iron,  they  made  an  incision  of  five 
inches  in  the  loins,  removed  the  thoracic  and  abdominal 
viscera,  cleansed  them  with  palm  wine  and  aromatics,  and, 
after  a  prayer  by  the  priest  that  all  the  sins  of  eating  and  of 
drinking  might  be  forgiven,  cast  them  into  the  river.3  The 
abdomen  was  next  filled  with  every  sort  of  spicery  except 
frankincense,  and  the  body  placed  for  forty  days  in  natrum, 
an  impure  carbonate  of  soda.  The  heart  embalmed  apart, 
having  been  placed  between  the  thighs,  the  whole  body 
was  then  wrapped  in  cere-cloths  with  all  the  exactness  of 
our  modern  spiral  and  reverse  bandages,  and  sealed  up 
with  wax  or  bitumen,4  and  in  some  cases  even  gold  was 
used.5  Bitumen  in  many  instances  was  used  in  the  body 


1  Gen.  1.  2,  3. 

2  Rawlinson's  Herod.,  vol.  ii.  pp.  119,  120,  and  notes. 

3  Pettigrew's  Hist,  of  Egyptian  Mummies,  London,  1834,  p.  58. 

4  Rawlinson's  Herodotus  Hist.,  ii.  $  136,  and  Diodorus  Siculus,  Bk.  I. 
vol.  i.  p.  102,  §  xcii. 

5  One  was  found  in  Siberia,  wrapped  in  forty  pounds  of  gold.     Petti- 
grew,  op.  cit.,  p.  65. 


36  EARL  Y  HISTOR  Y  OF 

itself.  In  case  the  usual  means  were  wanting,  honey  was 
used  as  the  sole  preservative,  as  in  the  case  of  Alexander 
the  Great.1  Some  seem  to  have  been  preserved  by  tan- 
ning, and  then  enveloped  in  wax.  In  fact,  the  very  name 
of  mummy2  is  supposed  to  be  derived  from  the  Arabic 
"miimmia,"  from  "mum,"  "wax."3 


1  Statius,  lib.  Hi.,  Carm.  ii.,  v.  117.     Pettigrew,  op.  cit.,  p.  86.     King 
Aristobulus'  body  was  similarly  preserved.   Josephus ,  Antiq. ,  lib.  xiv.  c.  vii. 

2  Rawlinson's  Herod.,  vol.  ii.  p.  122,  note. 

3  William  Hunter,  at  the  close  of  each  session,  usually  devoted  one  lec- 
ture to  teaching  his  students  how  to  make  preparations,  and  described  also 
a  process  in  imitation  of  the  Egyptian  method,  which  he  had  put  in  use. 
In  the  case  of  the  wife  of  Martin  Van  Butchell  (whose  body  is  now  in  the 
Royal  College  of  Surgeons)  his  success  was  very  good,  and  her  husband's 
own  account  of  it  is  such  a  curious  document  that  I  give  it  below.     Not 
satisfied  with  preserving  this  treasure,  he   soon  solaced  himself  with  a 
second  wife : — 

"  14  Jan.  1775.  At  2\  this  morning  my  wife  died.  At  8  this  morning 
the  statuary  took  off  her  face  in  plaster.  At  half-past  2  this  afternoon  Mr. 
Cruikshank  injected  at  the  crural  arteries,  5  pints  of  oil  of  turpentine  mixed 
with  Venice  turpentine  and  vermilion. 

"  i$th.  At  9  this  morning  Dr.  Hunter  and  Mr.  C.  began  to  open  and 
embalm  the  body  of  my  wife.  Her  diseases  were  a  large  empyema  in  the 
left  lung  (which  would  not  receive  any  air)  accompanied  with  pleurisy 
and  pneumonia  and  much  adhesion  ;  the  right  lung  was  beginning  also  to 
decay,  and  had  some  pus  in  it.  The  spleen  hard  and  much  contracted  ; 
the  liver  diseased  called  Rata  Malpighi.  The  stomach  very  sound.  The 
kidneys,  uterus,  bladder,  and  intestines  in  good  order.  Injected  at  the 
large  arteries,  oil  of  turpentine  mixed  with  camphored  spirits,  i.e.  10  oz. 
camphor  to  a  quart  spirits,  so  as  to  make  the  whole  vascular  system  tur- 
gid ;  put  into  the  belly  part  6  Ibs.  rosin  powder,  3  Ibs.  camphor  powder, 
and  3  Ibs.  of  nitre  powder  mixed  with  rectified  spirits. 

"  I7th.  I  opened  the  abdomen  and  put  in  the  remainder  of  powders 
and  added  4  Ibs.  rosin,  3  Ibs.  nitre,  and  i  Ib.  camphor  .  .  . 

"  i8th.  Dr.  H.  and  Mr.  C.  came  at  9  this  morning  and  put  my  wife  into 
the  box,  on  and  in  130  Ibs.  wt.  of  Paris  plaster,  at  18  pence  a  bag.  I  put 
between  the  thighs,  3  arquebusade  bottles,  one  full  of  camphored  spirits 
very  rich  of  the  gum,  one  containing  8  oz.  of  oil  of  rosemary,  and  in  the 
other  2  oz.  lavender. 


PRACTICAL  ANATOMY.  37 

The  mummies  have  been  put  to  some  curious  uses.  The 
Egyptians  gave  them  as  pledges  for  the  repayment  of  bor- 
rowed money,1  the  "hypothecated  bonds"  of  the  Alex- 
andrian "Bourse."  But  in  the  middle  ages  they  were 
still  more  curiously  employed,  as  potent  remedies  in  falls, 
bruises,  and  other  external  injuries.  "Mummy,"  says 
Sir  Francis  Bacon,  "hath  great  force  in  staunching  of 
blood,  which  may  be  ascribed  to  the  mixture  of  balms  that 
are  glutinous."  Francis  I.  always  carried  with  him  a  little 
packet  of  powdered  mummy  and  rhubarb  for  falls  and 
other  accidents.2  So  great  was  the  demand  that  as  the 
real  article  was  difficult  to  obtain,  like  Waterloo  bullets, 
they  were  manufactured  at  enormous  profits  by  avaricious 
Jews  in  Alexandria.  Ambroise  Pare,  who  was  born  in 
1509,  in  his  book  on  the  mummy,3  states  that  having 

"  igth.  I  closed  up  the  joints  of  the  box  lid  and  glasses  with  Paris 
plaster  mixed  with  gum  water  and  spirits  of  wine. 

"  25th.     Dr.  H.  came  with  Sir  Thomas  Wynn  and  lady. 

"  Feb.  5.     "  Dr.  H.  came  with  2  ladies  at  10  this  evening. 

"  7th.  Dr.  H.  came  with  Sir  Jno.  Pringle,  Dr.  Herberden,  Dr.  Watson, 
and  about  12  more  Fellows  of  the  Royal  Society. 

"  nth.  Dr.  H.  came  with  Dr.  Solander,  Dr. ,  Mr.  Banks,  and 

another  gentleman.  I  unlocked  the  glasses  to  clean  the  face  with  spirits 
of  wme  and  oil  of  lavender. 

"  I2th.  -  Dr.  H.  came  to  look  at  the  neck  and  shoulders. 

"  I3th.  I  put  4  oz.  camphored  spirits  into  the  box  at  the  sides  and 
neck,  and  6  Ibs.  of  plaster. 

' '  i6th.  I  put  4  oz.  oil  of  lavender,  4  oz.  oil  of  rosemary,  and  i  oz. 
oil  of  chamomile  flowers  (the  last  cost  4  shillings)  on  sides  of  the  face, 
and  3  oz.  of  very  dry  powder  of  chamomile  flowers,  on  the  breast,  neck, 
and  shoulders." 

The  body  resembles  a  Guanche  mummy  rather  than  an  Egyptian,  and 
is,  properly  speaking,  a  desiccated  rather  than  an  embalmed  body.  Petti- 
grew,  op.  cit.,  p.  258,  note. 

1  Pcttigrew,  op.  cit.,  pp.  16  and  17. 

3  Pettigrew,  op.  cit.,  p.  9.  Even  to-day  they  are  used  by  the  Arabs 
mixed  with  honey  (p.  12.). 

3  The  Workes  of  that  famous  Chirurgion,  Ambroise  Pare,  London, 
4 


38  EARLY  HISTORY  OF 

learned  this  fact  from  his  friend  De  la  Fontaine,  who  had 
observed  it  in  Egypt,  and  also  having  never  seen  any  good 
effect  from  the  remedy,  .he  did  all  in  his  power  to  dis- 
courage its  use  both  in  his  own  practice  and  also  in  all  his 
consultations.  He  gives  us  too,  in  his  book  on  embalm- 
ing, a  method  he  himself  used  for  the  preservation  of  a 
body,  with  very  gratifying  success,  and  as  it  is  the  earliest 
of  the  more  modern  methods,  I  will  give  its  quaint  and 
curious  details  and  results.1 

"The  body  which  is  to  be  embalmed  for  a  long  con- 
tinuance must  first  of  all  be  emboweled,  keeping  the  heart 
apart  that  it  bee  embalmed  as  the  kinsfolkes  may  thinke  fit. 
Also  the  braine,  the  scull  being  divided  with  a  saw,  shall 
be  taken  out.  Then  shall  you  make  deepe  incisions 
alongst  the  armes,  thighes,  legges,  backe,  loynes,  and  but- 
tockes,  especially  where  the  greater  veines  and  arteries 
runne,  first,  that  by  these  meanes  the  blood  may  be  pressed 
forth,  which  otherwise  would  putrifie,  .  .  .  and  then  that 
there  may  be  space  to  put  in  the  aromaticke  powders.  The 
whole  body  shall  be  washed  over  with  a  sponge  dipped  in 
aqua  vitae  and  strong  vinegar,  wherein  shall  be  boiled 
wormewood,  aloes,  coloquintida,  common  salt  and  alum. 
Then  these  incisions  and  all  the  passages  and  open  places 
of  the  body  and  the  three  bellys  shall  be  stuffed  with  the 
following  spices  grossely  powdered  :  R. — Pulv.  rosar., 
chamomil.  melil.  balsam,  menthae,  aneth.  saluise,  lauend. 
rosism.  maioram.  thymi,  absinthii,  cyperi,  calami  aro- 
matici,  gentianae,  ireos  flor.  assas  odoratae,  caryophyll. 
nucis  moschatae,  cinnamomi,  styracis,  calamitae,  benioini, 
myrrhre,  aloes,  santal.  (with  exquisite  indefiniteness),  quod 

1649,  p.  332.     I  cannot  refrain  from  giving  the  capital  pun  on  his  name 
in  the  motto  which  is  under  his  portrait  in  the  frontispiece.     "  Humanam 
Ambrosii  verehaec  pictura  Parasi,  effigiem,  sed  opus  continet  ambrosiam." 
1  Op.  cit.,  pp.  1130-2. 


I 


PRACTICAL   ANATOMY. 


39 


sufficit.  Let  the  incisions  be  sowed  up,  and  forthwith  let 
the  whole  body  be  anointed  with  turpentine  dissolved  with 
oyle  of  roses  and  chamomile.  Then  wrap  it  in  linen  cloath 
and  ceare  cloaths.  I  put  in  mind  hereby,  that  so  the  em- 
balming may  become  more  durable,  to  steepe  the  bodys 
in  a  woodden  tubbe  filled  with  strong  vinegar  and  the 
decoction  of  aromaticke  bitter  things,  as  aloes,  rue,  colo- 
quintida,  and  wormwoode,  and  there  keep  them  for  twenty 
days,  pouring  in  thereunto  eleven  or  twelve  pints  of  aqua 
vitsei ' '  Alcohol  is  the  real  means,  you  will  observe.  And 
now  for  the  result.  "I  have  at  home  the  body  of  one 
that  was  hanged,  which  I  begged  of  the  sheriff,  embalmed 
after  this  manner,  which  remains  sound  for  more  than 
twenty-five  yeeres,  so  that  you  may  tell  all  the  muscles  of 
the  right  side  (which  I  have  cut  up  even  to  their  heads, 
and  plucked  them  from  those  that  are  next  them  for  dis- 
tinctions sake,  that  so  I  may  view  them  with  my  eyes  and 
handle  them  with  my  hands,  that  by  renuing  my  memory 
I  may  worke  more  certainely  and  surely  when  as  I  have 
any  more  curious  operations  to  be  performed).  The  left 
side  remains  whole,  and  the  lungs,  heart,  diaphragma, 
stomache,  spleene,  kidneyes,  beard,  haires,  yea,  and  the 
nailes,  which  being  pared  (he  adds  with  charming  naivete), 
I  have  often  observed  to  grow  again  to  their  former  big- 
nesse." 

A  century  later  than  Pare,  Ruysch,  as  we  have  seen,  was 
said  to  have  the  most  astonishing  means  for  the  preser- 
vation of  his  subjects.  But  we  must  make  large  allowances 
for  the  natural  exaggeration  of  the  extremely  happy  results 
of  what  was  then  a  new  art.  Nor  should  we  be  the  better 
off  did  we  possess  the  secret  of  his  contemporary  De  Bilsius, 
a  noted  charlatan  of  Rotterdam,  whose  boasted  method, 
Haller  says,  was  bought  by  the  States  of  Brabant  for  the 
enormous  sum  of  122,000  florins,  or  more  than  four  times 


4o  EARL  Y  HISTOR  Y  OF 

the  price  of  Ruysch's  first  museum.  The  bodies  he  pre- 
tended to  embalm  for  the  University  of  Louvain  were  soon 
destroyed,  and,  apparently  in  proof  of  the  inefficacy  of  his 
own  method,  so  foul  was  the  air  of  the  rooms  in  which  he 
prepared  his  subjects,  that  it  was  said  to  have  been  the 
cause  of  the  consumption  to  which  he  fell  a  victim.1 

The  traveller  in  Europe  to-day  finds  a  number  of  speci- 
mens of  bodies  preserved  either  by  art  or  by  nature,  curious 
alike  to  the  antiquary  and  the  anatomist.  In  Milan  is  the 
body  of  St.  Carlo  Borromeo,  who  died  in  1584;  on  the 
Rhine,  near  Bonn,  in  an  old  monastery,  lie  over  a  score 
of  monks  in  cassock  and  cowl,  placed  in  its  vault  before 
Columbus  had  discovered  the  New  World ;  and  again,  in 
the  church  of  St.  Thomas,  at  Strasburg,  are  seen  the  bodies 
of  the  Count  of  Nassau  and  his  daughter,  over  six  hundred 
years  old.  The  skin  is  yellow  and  shrivelled,  but  perfectly 
preserved ;  the  small  clothes  of  the  father  have  been  re- 
placed by  imitations,  but  the  clothes  of  the  daughter  are 
intact.  The  lace  on  her  blue  gown  is  perfect,  bunches  of 
silver  flowers  adorn  her  hair,  jewels  lie  on  her  breast,  and 
even  diamond  rings  clasp  the  shrivelled  fingers  as  in 
mockery  of  death.  All  of  these  have  been  probably  pre- 
served by  the  aluminous  soils  in  which  they  were  placed. 
Cold  has  done  the  same  work  for  the  ghastly  remains  in 
the  morgue  on  top  of  the  great  St.  Bernard,  while  desic- 
cation has  shrivelled  both  features  and  limbs  into  con- 
tortions worthy  of  purgatory. 

The  largest  collection  of  bodies  preserved,  not  by 
nature,  but  by  art,  and  by  the  simplest  method,  namely, 
that  of  desiccation  by  means  of  artificial  heat,  is  in  the 
monastery  of  the  Capuchins,  near  Palermo.  All  its  in- 
mates who  have  died  for  the  last  two  hundred  and  fifty 

»  Bayle  et  Thillaye,  op.  cit.,  vol.  ii.  pp.  84-5. 


PRACTICAL   ANATOMY,  41 

years,  more  than  two  thousand  in  number,  stand  upright 
in  ghostly  companionship  in  the  niches  of  its  subterra- 
nean galleries.1 

None  of  these  means,  however,  would  do  for  dissection. 
For  practical  anatomy  the  introduction  of  alcohol2  with- 
out the  numerous  drugs  that  Pare  used,  was  the  first 
efficient  means  which  rendered  patient  and  prolonged 
dissection  available,  and  Cuvier  points  to  its  use  as  an 
indispensable  step  in  the  progress  of  comparative  anat- 
omy, as  it  rendered  possible  the  preservation  of  animals 
while  being  transported  from  distant  parts  of  the  world. 
Since  then  chemistry  has  added  largely  to  our  means  for 
such  purposes,  such  as  chloride  of  zinc,  arsenic,  salt,  and 
nitre,  hyposulphite  of  soda,  acetate  of  alumina,  and  other 
means  for  special  purposes.  In  Berlin,  Heidelberg,  Vienna, 
etc.,  alcohol  is  used  where  a  prolonged  dissection  is  neces- 
sary ;  but  for  the  ordinary  dissections  of  students  nothing 
whatever  is  used.  The  greater  number  of  unclaimed 
bodies,  arising  from  overcrowding,  poverty,  and  want, 
so  amply  supplies  the  anatomical  schools  that  they  dissect 
without  any  antiseptic,  and  remove  the  subjects  the 
moment  decomposition  sets  in.  In  Vienna  no  part  is 
allowed  to  remain  on  the  tables  more  than  seven  days. 
But' while  such  an  arrangement  would  be  disastrous  here, 

1  The  reader  who  is  curious  in  such  things  will  find  many  other  such 
instances  described  in  full  in  Pettigrew's  Hist.  Egypt.  Mummies,  and  in 
Harlan's  Gannal's  Hist,  of  Embalming,  8vo,  Philada.,  1840.  Among 
them  are  not  only  full  accounts  of  the  Egyptian  mummies,  but  also  of 
those  of  Peru,  Mexico,  the  Guanches,  etc.,  and  of  the  bodies  preserved 
at  Bordeaux,  Toulouse,  etc.  Dr.  A.  B.  Granville's  "  Essay  on  Egyptian 
Mummies,"  Phil.  Trans.,  1825,  p.  969  efsey.,a\so  contains  some  interest- 
ing facts,  including  a  case  of  ovarian  disease  discovered  in  a  mummy. 

a  Abucasis  in  the  twelfth  century  first  showed  how  to  get  spirits  from 
wine.  Raymond  Lully  (thirteenth  century)  first  dehydrated  it  by  carb. 
potass.  Gmelin's  Handb.  Chem.,  vol.  viii.  p.  194. 


42  EARLY  HISTORY  OF 

it  works  well  there  by  reason  of  their  different  mode  of 
study.  The  dissecting-rooms  are  only  open  from  twelve 
noon  to  seven  P.M.,  and  from  October  to  April;  but 
during  the  first  two  years  the  student  does  but  little 
beyond  dissection  and  the  study  of  anatomy. 

In  this  country,  where  the  supply  of  material  never 
equals  the  demand,  especially  in  the  winter,  we  are  com- 
pelled to  preserve  them  for  months.  The  chloride  of 
zinc  and  arsenic  are  the  favorite  means.1 

By  such  a  hasty  review  as  I  have  now  given  of  the 
imperfect  methods,  the  meagre  advantages,  and  the  re- 
stricted opportunities  for  the  cultivation  of  practical 
anatomy  by  former  students  of  medicine,  we  can  appre- 
ciate how  vastly  better  off  we  of  to-day  are  from  every 
point  of  view.  The  good  old  times  are  the  myths  of 
croakers  with  which  they  would  repress  the  progressive 
spirit  of  the  present.  Never  has  anatomy  made  so  rapid 
and  so  substantial  progress  as  in  the  present  century,  and 
never  has  it  in  this  country  attained  such  a  point  as  it 
occupies  to-day.  Yet  we  lack  much.  Our  very  wealth 
of  opportunities  threatens  us  with  a  Capuan  repose,  unless 
the  stirring  examples  of  the  great  men  who  have  pre- 
ceded us  stimulate  us  to  exertion.  Tertullian  says  that 
Herophilus,  in  Alexandria,  dissected  over  six  hundred 
bodies.2  Berengarius,  of  Carpi,  the  contemporary  of 
Vesalius,  dissected  over  one  hundred.3  Haller,  who  died 


1  For  some  researches  of  my  own  with  a  new  preservative — hydrate  of 
chloral— see  the  Philadelphia  Medical  Times,  March  21,  1874,  "  On  the 
Anatomical,  Pathological,  and  Surgical  Uses  of  Chloral."  My  subsequent 
experiments  have  fully  borne  out  the  conclusions  there  stated.    They  will 
be  given  at  length  in  a  subsequent  paper. 

2  Encyc.  Brit.,  vol.  ii.  p.  751.    Wm.  Hunter,  Introd.  Lect.,  p.  19. 

3  Bayle  et  Thillaye,  op.  cit.,  vol.  i.  p.  244. 


PRACTICAL  ANATOMY.  43 

a  century  ago,  says  that  with  his  own  hand  he  had  dis- 
sected over  four  hundred  in  seventeen  years ; x  and  that 
almost  unequalled  worker,  John  Hunter,  when  asked  at 
the  trial  of  Captain  Donellan,  in  1781,  whether  he  had 
not  dissected  more  than  any  other  man  in  Europe,  re- 
plied, "In  the  last  thirty-three  years  I  have  dissected 
some  thousands  of  bodies."2  It  seems  an  exaggeration; 
but  remember  his  habits.  For  thirty  years  his  working- 
day  consisted  of  nineteen  to  twenty  hours.  He  rose  at 
lour  or  rive  o'clock,  and  always  dissected  till  his  breakfast 
hour,  at  nine,  and  after  his  labors  in  pmrJJre  and  the 
hospital- wank  were  aver,  his  labors  in  the  dissect 
room  re-comrhehced,  and  he  never  left  it  "till  midnight 
even  later.  When  any  of  you,  then,  visit  the  Hunterian 
Museum,  in  London,  remember  what  it  cost  him  in 
money,  and,  what  is  more,  the  unceasing  labor  of  a  long 
life.  Such  diligence  has  sometimes,  alas  !  cost  the  world 
more  than  money  or  toil.  It  cost  the  life  of  Bichat,  who 
died  at  barely  thirty-one  from  constant  confinement  in 
his  dissecting-rooms.  "Bichat,"  wrote  Corvisart  to  the 
First  Consul,  "has  just  died  on  a  field  of  battle  that 
counts  more  than  one  victim.  No  man  in  so  short  a 
time  has  done  so  much  and  so  well."3 

Joining  diligent  work  to  the  unequalled  opportunities 
that  we  now  have,  the  laborers  in  the  vast  field  of  medi- 
cine, in  whatever  department  they  toil,  will  meet  with  a 
reward  never  before  equalled.  The  future  opens  to  the 
active  worker  the  brightest  prospects.  Happy  will  he  be 
who  knows  how  to  avail  himself  of  its  advantages  ! 

1  Encyc.  Brit.,  8th  ed.,  vol.  ii.  p.  715.  2  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  134. 

3  Bichat  sur  la  Vie  et  la  Mort,  p.  xiv. 


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